It’s All Rainbows and Unicorns – A Fictitious Story About How Things Can Go Wrong in the Backcountry.

Mountainwatch| Doug Chatten

A fictitious story from our friends at Snowy Mountains Backcountry about how things can go wrong in the backcountry.

Although the group had spent some time planning their day trip to Blue Lake, this was the first time they had met face to face. Sid from Albury, Nancy from Melbourne and Johnny from Sydney had met on an online backcountry forum site. After a long drive they met at the Brumby Bar in Jindabyne, had a brief discussion about their planned journey the next day and then settled into quite a few rounds of drinks and a robust slam dancing session to a touring punk rock band “The Snow Guns”.

Meeting at the Guthega car park the next morning the group strode out into post-frontal cloud and a biting 40km/hr south westerly unknotting their twisted weary bodies after a late night and uncomfortable sleep in their illegally parked vehicles.

The three strong resort skiers who’d each made only a few short backcountry trips to and from the comfort of the ski area boundary had sized each other up online. They established that they were all at a similar level and the proposed journey was within their grasp. The set date had been aligned with annual leave opportunities and the punk rock show. They all had heavy duty rigs, stiff boots with no walk mode and high traction skins, suitable for skiing steeps and variable snow but not great for covering distances.

From online info Johnny had an adequately kitted day pack and navigation gear including map, compass, GPS and Personal Locating Beacon (PLB), a lightweight shelter and down jacket. Sid and Nancy had small 16Lt resort packs unsuitable for carrying skis and other than skins, food, water, down jacket, First Aid and a shovel (for kickers) had very little gear.

Before departing they loosely discussed the route which was  gleaned from popular forum postings: 3km of generally flat terrain below the tree line, cross the suspension bridge over the Snowy River, make the 5km by 600 metre vertical climb above the tree line to Twynam saddle, scope the map then drop into the steep Blue Lake chutes that can have at times a large corniced rim at the top. Climb out and reverse the plan to return.  Couldn’t be that hard, we can all ski well and have the right gear?

Standby for the next instalment to see how our Storm Farer’s get on!