Ski trip

I wish we were there for another day. It takes a day to be reacquainted with how everything works; then the second day whizzes past faster than the skiers coming off the top of the mountain. This time, however, I did end up exploring more of Thredbo, having finally conquered the first-timers part of the ski field. It was difficult, however, to describe this exploring as being much of a success.

I now have rather fond memories of our first attempt at the next level up (the so-called “easiest” trails). Well, Zhiyan had the common sense to pull out early, and soon after that, I realised Daniel - along with our only copy of the map - had vanished too. So Tommy and I inched forward past the deathly-steep cliff face, and somehow the trail turned into this - what seemed to us - ridiculously steep path. (We worked out later that we meandered onto a more difficult path. We should have read the map more carefully.) The thing about skiing is that once you start, there’s no turning back, so we gave it a go, but quite soon, both of us were down, skis off. Taking our skis off was a mistake, because there we couldn’t get the skis back on with the amount of ice that had formed on our boots. We then had fun stumbling through quicksand-like snow, which was determined to consume the two of us. (Hint: never walk through the parts between the trees.) We somehow stumbled back to a chair lift station, counting our blessings that we were able to extricate ourselves. To add to the experience, the chair lift down was downright scary - it was steep, windy and a long way down. By the time the chair lift dumped us back at the top of the Friday Flat area, I was stunned to the extent that I pretty much couldn’t ski at all. But we made it back. Alive.

Me in the happier parts of the ski field

On the second day, I was up there again, this time to take photos and play with the snow with Ru Jih. Wong, who was also with us, said he wanted to ski back down, and I foolishly agreed - I had studied the map now and yes, I was able to identify the correct path this time, but I still couldn’t ski down. The skis came off, wouldn’t go back on, and it was another walk back down to Merritts. Tried twice, failed twice.

From Thredbo, we also brought back the finding that UAI is inversely related to common sense. One of the chair lifts had a closed intermediate station. The chair itself passes very close to the concrete platform of the station. The results: Daniel was the only one who completed the operation successfully; Zhiyan didn’t get anything damaged but ended up being carried up to the top of the mountain; Tommy got one pole snapped in half and the other bent; and I got both my poles snapped. We had carried them between our legs.

Tommy and I with the outcome of our misadventure

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