October LWE in Kosciuszko

The snow season started a little late this year, but got into full swing around the third weekend when a 5 day storm starting on a Wednesday brought over a metre of snow to the resorts and more to the main range. I happened to be down that weekend, the Saturday was very windy with low visibility but fairly good snow. Little skiing was achieved. The Sunday was substantially worse - it was so windy and the snow so thick I retreated to Sydney when a guy in a Land Cruiser told me he was struggling in the conditions as he drove out.
I went down the following two weekends to some of the best conditions I'd ever experienced. I skied across the snowy river instead of needing to use the bridge. We skied some amazing virgin powder, amazingly dry, soft and fluffy. We went further out than I'd ever been. I managed to tele-turn. So it was a bit of a let down as the season continued and the conditions deteriorated quite quickly as a result of little follow up snow, seemingly resulting in a short season - most NSW resorts down to half their runs with more than a fortnight before the official end to the season.
So it was with great delight that with a week until the official end I spied a forecast containing claims of between 10-20cm for a few days in a row - coinciding with the long weekend. The closer the weekend drew the more promising the forecast looked, so with no dry bushwalks to be had anywhere in the state I managed to convince Ans that if we were going to be precipitated on anywhere, we might as well do it where we could use it to our advantage - Kosciuszko!
The only way it would happen is if we had a leisurely drive down on the Saturday and spent the night in Jindy. It was done, and great pizza was had at a local establishment. Sunday came and with ominous clouds still lingering we headed off up the mountains and out to Guthega. We could barely see the peaks for the snow and cloud, leaving me a bit uncomfortable at the thought of staying in the backcountry that night. As a result we kitted up for a daytrip and left Guthega for the main range. There was enough snow to ski (and skin) all the way to the snowy river, but the short season also made short work of the previous snowbridge across it. It was back to using the swing bridge.
As we skinned up Twynam Creek, snow falling lightly on us and the winds nowhere near as bad as the 30-45km/h that had been predicted, I felt even worse about my decision to not stay in the backcountry that night - at least 8 tents were set up in various points on either side of the creek. Still, we made the best of a bad situation and continued up the hills towards Twynam. The higher we got the stronger the winds got, and with more than a kilometre to go we could see no more than 100m at a time. We bailed on the idea of making it up to Sirensong catchment and peering over the western end and decided to go down. We skied down and skinned back up several times. Each time we came down we had fresh snow to ski on - snow was light, fluffy and continually falling. After a bite to eat and more snow eating we did one final run - from the very top of Twynam creek all the way to the swing bridge back across the snowy. We skinned the final section as our muscles fatigued and made it out before the sun dipped.
We spent an uneventful night in the van and woke early to a bright, cloud free and freezing sky - so cold that the van had frozen locks, windows and all but one door. I eventually boiled enough water to unstick all these before we headed up the ridge across the dam from Guthega. I was only in a t-shirt and waterproof pants for most of the way up. The sun was bright and hot, hot, hot. We made it to the top of the ridge by around 10am where I had a (bad) attempt at some tele turns. After returning from a short run Ans and I both headed down - a sensationally fun 1km run back to the dam. She lay and sunned herself while I had "one more run". By the time I stopped to again run down it was just after 11am, hotter again in the sun. As I skied down, more than once I almost ground to a halt, the snow now wet and very slow. Well before I reached Ans I had to use my stocks to push me down the hill. Now the day, and the season, was truly ending. We skinned back to the van and were out of the national park before midday. Regardless, the weekend had been fun and relaxed with mostly excellent conditions.
I am already looking forward to the 2012 season when Sirensong, Little Austria and various other beauties will be skied by me.
I put some photos up on g+