Snow Journal – The Glass Half Full, 2014 Season Wrap-Up

There’s no denying it, mid-July offered the best snow of the whole season. Nate Johnstone slashes some fresh Aussie pow off the backside of Mt Buller. July 19 2014. Image:: Railton

Mountainwatch | Reggae Elliss

 As I write, there is still two weeks to go until the “official” end of the season here in Thredbo. Despite the warm weather of the past couple of days, plus 20mm of rain forecast, it looks like we’ll have some lifts spinning until October 6.  Looking back on this winter, it’s a bit of a ‘glass half full’ scenario. The great snowfalls and powder days of July gave way to only minimal snowfalls in the past eight weeks with only two falls of over 10cm since July 18.

However, while we haven’t had that many powder days in the second half of winter, the snow has remained consistently good. August was a month of dry, chalky, packed-powder, cold sunny days and light wind. The past three weeks have also been good, with plenty of days of fun spring snow and sunshine.

Pre-season, all of the talk was about how an El Nino weather pattern was forming and this could mean a dry, cold winter, with minimal snowfall. Unfortunately, this sentiment gained a lot of traction when the opening weekend in June came and went without any natural snow, hardly any snowmaking and only one lift open in Australia, a t-bar to the second tower on Perisher’s Front Valley.

Artificial snow was the only thing on offer in the first week of the season. The guns are switched on, June 16, Falls Creek. Image:: Hocking

The media were having a field day, quoting all sorts of expert sources, all of whom concurred that 2014 was shaping up as a disaster with minimal snowfall. It could even be as bad as ’82. The ray of hope was our own Grasshopper, who wisely pointed out in his June seasonal outlook that it was too early to push the panic button and reminded us of his earlier seasonal outlooks published in April and May. In those, the Grasshopper emphasised that there are two variations of El Nino, the classic, dry cold version or the ‘Wrong ‘un”, a term the Grasshopper coined to describe an El Nino that spun the other way, delivering cold westerly air flows, low pressure systems south of Victoria and snow-bearing cold fronts.

It was too early to call at that stage, but he wasn’t jumping on the classic ‘El Nino’ bandwagon and was still leaning towards a ‘Wrong ‘Un” for the first half of the season and was calling for a snow depth max at Spencers Creek of 172cm and the first 50cm + storm coming in late June/early July.

As we now all know, that’s what happened.

The week of June 25 saw the arrival of the mega-storm. The media dubbed it snow-maggeddon. Image:: Perisher

The first snow of the year came through on June 14 when we had 20cm, not a season starter, but enough to soothe the nerves. The first big storm hit on June 23, leaving most of the Australian resorts with 50cm in 24 hours, which turned things around dramatically. Prior to that storm, less than a week until the start of school holidays, Perisher had three lifts on Front Valley open, Thredbo had opened then closed the Cruiser chair but had a goat trail for beginners on Friday Flat and there were no lifts open in any of the other resorts.

Simon Blondel, Director of Le Bent and powder aficionado, scored some great snow on June 30 in Thredbo. Image:: Blondel

36 hours later, all resorts in Australia had a number of lifts and 50% of their terrain open. A second front moved in on June 27 with 154 km/hr winds registered at Thredbo top station and by Sunday morning another 50cm had dropped across the resorts, backed up by another 10-20cm by Monday morning when the weather finally cleared. It was a massive kick-start, a metre-and-a-half of snow in a week was punctuated with some epic powder days and it was all lifts and terrain open in the first week of July.

Mid-July dished some all-time Aussie skiing, as good as it gets. Katya Crema, Mt Buller, July 19 Image:: Railton

July chugged along nicely, the school holidays enjoyed some epic conditions with another 15cm on July 6-7 before a solid storm dropped another 50cm on July 9 -10, which resulted in some awesome powder on July 11. The following week saw another 30cm from July 16-18 and I marked July 18 as one of the best days skiing I’ve ever had – anywhere.

The media jumped onboard and the snow was in the news, the headlines now saying 2014 was looking like “The best season ever.”

Optimism was high and the week of July 20-27 was clear, turning on some beautiful dry winter snow, sunshine and minimal crowds. The wind picked up on July 27, a day of classic windblown snow here in Thredbo, but it was also the prelude to four days of gale force winds, wind-hold, and even some rain mid-week, not a pleasant way to see out July.

August 1 in Thredbo, is this video really filmed in Australia?

Snow was in the forecast and it came through on the night of July 31st and the following day was another good one, solid snowfalls dropped another 15-20cm, during the afternoon, which was another arvo of fresh tracks every run. We ended up with a total of 25cm, but no one thought at the time that this would be the last good snowfall in August.

However, the Grasshopper had warned in his August outlook that the month would be dry with a few snowfalls, but no big snow-bearing storms as a series of highs would dominate the weather.

He was right, with just a couple of top-ups during the month – 10cm on August 10-11 and then another 10-15cm on August 17-18. Fortunately there was minimal rain and it was cold for most of the month, which maintained the snow while the snowmakers had perfect conditions and a lot of good nights with the guns cranked at full capacity. The result was a very good base in the snowmaking areas, which has come in handy over the past couple of weeks as we’ve had some warmer spring days as we’ve moved deeper into September.

August and September were mostly like this, warm weather and sunshine. One Hit Wonder event director Tim Myers doing a ‘course test’. Image:: Thredbo

August was a fair-weather skier’s dream, 26 days of sunshine, and dry, chalky, winter snow. There were plenty of great days on the hill, but if you like hooking into fresh snow it was nothing to write home about.  Everyone refers to 2013 as one of the worst years on record, but August last year had plenty of powder days in the first three weeks, with a total of 195cms of snow falling by August 23. This year’s August was nothing in comparison, with a cumulative total of only 45-50cm of snow for the month.

Fortunately there was hardly any rain, so we didn’t lose any of the base, despite the lack of snow.

September 3. The last powder day of 2014. Image:: Reggae Elliss

The last real taste of winter was on Tuesday September 2, with 10cm on the ground that morning. The snow looked to have cleared by late morning but the snow closed in again at midday, and it snowed hard until after lifts closed. We ended up getting another 20cm that afternoon, with a strong, cold WSW wind blowing in a lot of snow as well – ensuring each run was untracked.

Since then, we’ve had a couple of dustings, but it has been spring skiing for the past three weeks. While we haven’t had any storms for three weeks, cold overnight temps have ensured the snow quality has been holding up with some great spring conditions. However the smaller, lower resorts like Selwyn and Baw Baw suffered and ended up losing their base quickly, closing on Sept 14.

Charlottes also closed on Sept 14, not due to a lack of snow, that’s just its official closing date and it still had a good base and all lifts open for its final day.This week has seen warmer temps and an accelerated meltdown, but the cover is hanging in and there’s still some fun spring snow to be had. Despite the lack of snow in the second half of the winter it looks like all of the major resorts will make it to their official closing dates. Hotham, Falls and Buller are due to close this Sunday, Sept 28 while Thredbo will close on October 6. Perisher announced a few weeks ago that it would keep some lifts open until October 10.

So, as we head into the footy finals, it’s appropriate to call 2014 a season of two halves. Maybe not the “best season ever”, but at least it was consistent. Plenty of people are talking about logging over 60 or 70 days on their favourite hill. In my book, that makes it a season worth remembering.