For a bit of fun, I took my GPS receiver with me tucked into the elastic band of my goggles (I have found that the device sometimes struggles to get good signals when it is in a pocket). I wasn’t afraid of getting lost, but the experimental scientist part of me tends to get excited about the datalogging capabilities of my GPS receiver. I was actually quite surprised at some of the information it recorded; for instance, I was a little unnerved to find that I had been travelling at up to nearly 50 km/h on the snow!

The best bit about GPS is of course being able to see a map of the day’s adventures. Here is an interactive zoomable map showing our entire day’s path colour coded by speed. It is superimposed on the Google aerial imagery, which must have been photographed during the summer.

One interesting thing that you will notice if you look carefully (and have some knowledge of the Perisher Blue ski resort) is that t-bars actually travel faster than chairlifts, except for the “express” chairs. Another very interesting set of recorded data was the elevation above sea level. I’ve included two separate altitude profiles, one as a function of time and the other as a function of distance travelled.

The profile against time seems to be in GMT, but shows the break in the middle where we stopped at Blue Cow Terminal for lunch. The other nifty part of this graph is that it shows the waiting time in queues for lifts. The profile against distance gives a better indication of the actual steepness of the slopes, but is not really big enough for analysis of this sort. Like the map, both altitude profiles are coloured by speed.

The immediately noticable saw-tooth pattern of the altitude profile surprised me at first, but is of course the natural fingerprint of alpine resort skiing: up lifts and down slopes again and again. If you want to identify the specific features, here is a full list of the lifts we caught:

• Village 8 Express
• Forester Quad Express
• Blue Calf T-bar
• Blue Calf T-bar
• Blue Calf T-bar
• Blue Calf T-bar
• Blue Cow T-bar
• Blue Calf T-bar
• Blue Cow T-bar
• Car Park Double Chair
• Blue Cow T-bar
• Blue Calf T-bar
• Blue Calf T-bar
• Blue Calf T-bar
• Blue Cow T-bar
• Summit Quad Chair
• Terminal Quad Chair

Lunch

• Summit Quad Chair
• Terminal Quad Chair
• Brumby T-bar
• Pleasant Valley Quad Chair
• Piper T-bar
• Bourke T-bar
• Kaaten Triple Chair
• Bourke T-bar
• Link T-bar
• Telemark T-bar
• Forester Quad Express (to mid station)
• Mount Perisher Triple Chair
• Eyre T-bar
• Eyre T-bar
• Leichhardt T-bar

Since it was our last day on the snow for this year, this is a good opportunity to share a summary of skiing memories from the season. On the whole we were very lucky with weather, and the only real exception to this was August 10 when Luke and I skied though falling snow. Although the visibility was poor, that day was considered one of the best ever in Australia for powdery snow conditions. It was the first time I have ever needed to use chains on the car.

Another interesting thing that I managed to do on the snow this year was record some video. The day I spent skiing with Luke we took quite a lot of footage on his waterproof and shockproof GoPro camera. I haven’t yet had time to edit the highlights together, and still need to work out a good way to present the videos online, but I hope to show some of that footage here soon. I spent the afternoon with Luke’s camera strapped to the front of my ski boot, and the success of “boot-cam” videoing has caused me to seriously consider purchasing such a camera.

Clansi and I have also used our compact Nikon Coolpix S51 to record some video of each other, and it provides good feedback as we strive to improve our techniques on the snow. For now, however, I’ll leave you with a photographic summary of our ski season.

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We have chosen to invest in Alpine Touring (AT), or “Randonee”, gear. The spectacular trip we made to the summit of Mount Kosciuszko last June was enough to get us addicted to backcountry skiing. Since the AT system is essentially identical to downhill gear when the bindings are locked down, we decided to go for good all-round equipment that would suit us both on and off the resort.

I’ve included some details below about our shiny new gear, but first I should assure you that it works wonderfully on the snow.  The snow at Perisher-Blue yesterday was quite good, with only a few icy patches.  After lunch the predicted snow shower came through and freshened up the surface with a centimetre or two of tiny flakes.  Both Clansi and I were happy with how our skis handled the variety of conditions.

The only complaint we had came from our toes.  Both our boots have thermo-liners, which mould to your foot when heated with warm air.  We had our liners thermo-moulded two weeks ago at the local ski shop, and wore thin socks as advised by many online information sources.  Our ski socks are more padded toes, and we both found our toes were uncomfortably compressed.  A re-moulding of the liners should fix this easily.

I ended up buying Garmont Adrenaline boots, which have interchangable soles for Alpine (downhill) bindings or AT bindings.  I am currently using some borrowed (likely to be purchased) Rossignol Scratch Sprayer FS skis with ordinary downhill bindings on them, but have purchased a set of AT bindings that I may put on the skis if I do buy them.  The helmet was the only thing that I didn’t get on sale, but it is more than just a fashion accessory.  On backcountry trips there is no ski-patrol to come and help you in an emergency, and any attempt at prevention is worth it.  Of course, now that I own one I will be wearing it on the resort as well.

With her pink-and-black Salomon Temptress twin-tips, Clansi has far more spectacular skis.  Since the skis came without bindings, she was able to put a set of Damir Freeride Plus AT bindings on them straight away.  The clash of the red bindings with the pink of the Temptresses is the only flaw in an otherwise extremely glamourous set of equipment, and we may colour over the obvious red areas.  Her Scarpa Diva boots are very light and comfortable for touring, but seem to have plenty of strength for driving the skis down challenging slopes.

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Apart from the scenery, our main reason for visiting Zermatt was to spend a day skiing in the famous Alps. Even though the beginnings of Spring are visible, Zermatt’s altitude and glaciers make skiing possible 365 days a year. After a few warm up runs on the lower slopes, we took our chances and caught a gondola to the highest point of the Zermatt lifts. Skiing on the “Matterhorn Glacier Paradise” brings its own challenges; such as the minus 16 degree (celcius) temperatures, made even colder by significant windchill.

After a few hours enjoying the superb snow, we skied all the way back down to Zermatt and a balmy 0 degree evening. A traditional Swiss fondue ended the day perfectly.

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Our party consisted of Clansi and myself, Matthew Clark and our experienced leaders Steve and Mel Wawrzonek. We caught the Kosciuszko Express chairlift up to the top of the Thredbo ski slopes, put on our skins, and set of towards Australia’s highest point. The sky was clear, and there was almost no wind – a perfect alpine day.

Almost 3 hours later and 6 km later, we reached the summit of Kosciuszko. It was a majestic venue to eat lunch, but the cold was quite an incentive to get moving again. Coming back down we experienced one of the joys of AT skiing: removing the skins enabled us to make the most of going downhill.

A bonus at the end of the day was an almost 2 km run down the slopes of Thredbo. It was a bit icy due to the lengthening shadows, which combined with my exhausted muscles and meager experience to produce plenty of falls.

Click on thumbnails for slideshow

Alpine touring skis have bindings that can be released at the heel so that your foot pivots upwards from the front of the boot (allowing a semi-natural walking motion), but they can also be fixed down. The skis have “skins” that can be stuck on the bottom surface to provide resistance to them sliding backwards which makes skiing uphill possible.

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(This post was published on my Lachlan.Rogers.name website. If you are reading this on Facebook Notes or Google Buzz or another RSS import, please consider commenting on the original post to keep the conversation accessible to everyone.)