Let me begin by saying it’s not easy to operate a ski resort in Australia. The winters are short, the weather is unpredictable and the country is pretty isolated, which means resorts can’t rely much on worldwide travelers to visit.

That said, I was still extremely excited to be heading to Thredbo, one of Australia’s most popular ski resorts, for some shredding on the tail end of a business trip. It was a steaming 30 celsius in Toronto, and my last day of riding had been in March with Josh. I was looking forward to getting in a few turns on the other side of the planet.

I had chosen Thredbo because a) it was the easiest resort to get to from Sydney, where I had spent the previous week, b) the bus station was a quick hop from my hotel and c) the trip was a little under eight hours on a single bus. Thredbo also featured Australia’s highest lifted peak serviced by lifts, but that point would become moot (more on that later).

So, on Saturday morning I hopped on an Australian Greyhound bus and headed to Thredbo. Prior to leaving I had checked the conditions, and the resort was reporting a base of about 50cm with good spread and seven lifts open. I was encouraged, because seven lifts was the majority of the ones at the resort.

The bus ride was long, but uneventful. There was lots of beautiful countryside, and the ride gave me the opportunity to quickly see several towns and cities like Canberra (the capital), Cooma and Jindabyne.

One of the most interesting things about taking the Sea to Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler is that the weather in Vancouver can be sunny, warm and well above zero, yet a quick two-hour drive later you are surrounded by heaps of snow. For some reason I was expecting this to be the case in Thedbo, too, as the bus rode through the rain. At some point, I thought, the rain would surely turn to snow. When the bus pulled up in Thredbo, though, it became quickly apparent that I had misjudged the weather – it was still raining in the village. And as I would discover in my couple of days on the mountain, rain in the village generally meant rain up top, too. But more on that later.

I had booked myself into the Thredbo Alpine Hotel, figuring the central location would make it easy for me to get around, and the reviews had been quite positive. The hotel had a very 1970s decor to it, but it was definitely friendly and warm. I checked in, got up to my room, dropped my stuff, and realized my first big problem.

There was no Internet in the room.

Now, this might not seem like a big deal at first. But imagine you’re 10 days into a trip where you’re as far away from your family as you can possibly be, in a time zone 14 hours in the future, in a tiny hotel room, on your own, with no way to communicate with anyone other than telephone, which is ridiculously expensive. Also, imagine you’re on a sort of “working holiday” whereby people in your office back home are still expecting answers to some important issues. It was not the start I was hoping for. Okay, I thought, I’ll take a tour around the village and find an Internet hotspot. I’ll also see what the rest of the village is like.

Unfortunately, the entire village could be toured in about 10 minutes. It certainly wasn’t as dull as, say, Jay Peak, but it had absolutely nothing on a Canadian resort like Whistler or Blue Mountain. At 4pm on a Saturday, you could also hear a pin drop. Not a good sign.

A quick investigation revealed there were no hotspots to be spoken of. Back at the front desk, they confirmed I was screwed.

I refused to let my situation get to me. After all, I was here to snowboard, and I knew that even if the rain continued all night there would be riding on the mountain. And at around 10pm, there was even a positive development – the constant rain turned to very thick, wet snow. But hey, it was snow.

SUNDAY
I got up at 7am ready to roll. I had a coffee (pardon, a “flat white” – the coffee really is awesome pretty much everywhere in Australia), got dressed and headed out to get a lift pass. Checking the conditions at the base of the mountain, the resort reported 10 fresh centimetres up top and once again seven lifts open.

Unfortunately, “seven lifts” essentially meant only half the mountain and no bowls were open. “Australia’s highest lifted point” was inaccessible, as well as most of the difficult terrain on the mountain. Not a good sign. Even worse, lift tickets were almost A HUNDRED DOLLARS. Remember what I said about ski seasons being short? That meant an early season discount on lift passes didn’t exist.

I started by day by taking the Snowgums chairlift, which delivers you more or less to the middle of the mountain. The way up was very green and very slow. This would turn out to be a common theme at Thredbo; some of the lifts that serve popular terrain are ancient and painfully slow. But what the hell, I thought, I’m going to snowboard!

I was giddy with excitement when I finally got off the lift. I strapped in and let ‘er rip on the World Cup run, an ungroomed blue run full of fresh. It was amazing. There was no-one tracking out the snow, there was no-one in front of me, and I was snowboarding in June, on the other side of the planet. Totally awesome.

The elation was somewhat shortlived as I approached the middle and bottom of the mountain, though. There was only one run back to the lift, and it was via a man-made pile of snow that was dicey at best (this would be a common theme). Moreover, if I wanted to get back up to where I just was, I had to endure another 20-minute lift. I decided it was time to explore some more.

I headed over to the “Cruiser” area of the mountain, which was accessible only by another slow, ancient lift followed by a trip further up using a high-speed quad. Conditions on the Cruiser side weren’t bad, but the trip from the top of a run to the bottom in this area was shorter than a Blue Mountain run. Seeking something more interesting, I headed to the only other part of the mountain that was open, served by the Gunbarrel Express.

The only open run (aside from the terrain park) was a fast, long blue run named High Noon that eventually turned into a man-made pile of slop. It was actually a great run, but it was the only one open. So imagine basically the whole resort taking the same run up and down, over and over. By noon, the trail was more or less demolished.

What amazed me, though, was that everyone continued to ride the shit out of the trail. By noon, there were bare patches EVERYWHERE on the bottom half of the run, but it seemed to phase no-one, nor were the bare patches marked in any way. After two days of this, my snowboard had significant new dents in it, many of which are going to require repair before next season.

Just as I was getting a bit disappointed with the whole experience I ran into Stefan (I’m guessing about the spelling), a builder from Sydney who was camping in his van for the weekend. He was a really cool dude, and he offered to take me on a run with him. He was dropping into the trees, of which there were many. Happy to get off the groomers, I followed him in. It was pretty funny – within two seconds of dropping in, he was GONE. I, on the other hand, was quickly sinking into the deep, very wet snow. I thanked him for showing me around and said that while I enjoyed it, I was going to take a pass on following him on the next run.

Having explored all three areas of the mountain by about lunch, I headed back in, pretty dejected. It was obvious the mountain was not in good shape. There wasn’t much happening in the village. And I had no Internet. I was happy I had come, and happy I got to shred. But thankfully I only had one day to go.
MONDAY

It rained overnight and throughout Monday, so there was no new snow to speak of. Having rode everything available on Sunday, I headed out again on another expensive lift ticket because I thought, how often was I going to get to do this? The advantage this time was that I knew where to go and what to hit. I once again headed up to the World Cup area for a couple of early morning runs, and had an absolute blast. One good thing about Thredbo was there were no lift lines to speak of on either day, so I had the entire run to myself. Once again I was shocked that, even as one of the first people down, I was encountering unmarked bare spots everywhere, and rain. No-one else seemed to mind. I genuinely got the impression the Aussies had such a short season that they were game to basically ride anything.

After a couple of runs I headed back to the Gunbarrel Express area where I did the same run over and over and over (there was only one open, once again). After about five or six runs I decided to call it, and once again headed in around noon and started packing for my return to Sydney – and Canada.

Could the experience have been better? Absolutely. But as Stefan from Sydney told me, it was still very early season. Things really didn’t start hopping at Thredbo, he said, until July or August, when the snow really started dumping. Did I regret going? Absolutely not. Snow or no snow, it’s an experience I’ll remember the rest of my life.

OTHER NOTES

* The on-mountain facilities at Thredbo are quite nice. There’s plenty of space, a wide variety of foods, and places to eat both at the bottom and top of the mountains.
* Australians eat kangaroo. For real.
* Should you ever visit Thredbo or Perisher (a neighbouring resort), try August or September.
* I am told you can do the drive from Sydney to Thredbo in five or six hours if you rent a car. The drive up seemed mostly to be major highways.

See you on the other side. And Happy Canada Day! It’s already July 1 where I am.

When I found out I would be heading this way and realized it was winter, I started to explore what, if any, snowboarding options there might be. It turned out I had two: the Snowy Mountain area of southern Australia, or New Zealand. Initially I chose New Zealand, because the mountains and conditions appeared to be superior in quality. However, it required a three-hour flight from Sydney, followed by a drive of at least a couple of hours, and it was generally a logistics nightmare. I decided to stay closer to Sydney.

Having chosen Australia, my next task was to figure out where to go. I wasn’t interested in driving 6-8 hours to the Snowy Mountains, so the resort I chose had to be relatively accessible. After doing some research, this left me with two:

• Perisher: This is Australia’s largest ski resort, with four(!!!) distinct villages.
• Thredbo: Although not as large as Persiher, Thredbo is well-known for its village and having invested in the largest snowmaking system in the Southern Hemisphere.

I ultimately opted for Thredbo because I found a Greyhound bus that goes directly to Thredbo from a bus terminal that’s only a kilometre from where I’m staying here in Sydney. That was about as easy as it was going to get travel-wise.

Once I made that decision I set out to secure lodgings, which actually wasn’t easy to do; I found Thredbo’s online system to be confounding and reporting ridiculously limited availability. After some poking around on Need It Now, though, I found some relatively reasonaby-priced accomodations at the Thredbo Alpine Hotel.

So a week from today I’m going to hop on a Greyhound bus in a country I’ve never visited before to drive eight hours in order to ride early-season conditions. Do I think it will be worth it? Absolutely.

Okay, so it’s been a while. I could make up all the excuses in the world, but the fact of the matter is Josh and I ran out of steam as the winter ended. Not that we were posting tons in the first place, but I think we both ran out of things to talk about as the season subsided. Moreover, although I own both a road bike and mountain bike, I’ve been doing very little of either. Instead, I’ve been running like a madman. And I’ve lost a few pounds as a result!

But anyway. Here we are. I’ve missed the blog. And I see people keep coming by to talk about snowboarding, ACL surgery recovery, Josh’s new car and more. Thank you for continuing to support us, even though we went AWOL for, like, two full months.

I do have some very exciting news to share, though. Despite the fact the temperature in Toronto is generally hot, muggy and sunny, I’m going snowboarding next week! On Thursday I’m heading to Sydney, Australia for business trip, and after my work there is done I’m going to spend three nights and four days at Thredbo, a popular Australian ski resort. They’ve got a base of a little over 50 centimetres up there right now, as it’s winter, so I figured what the heck — I could either shred for a couple of days, or tour around Sydney. Of course I chose the shredding. 

So. Net result here is I’ll be talking a fair bit about Thredbo and snowboarding in Australia/New Zealand in the coming days, as I did a lot of research on the scene down there before making my decision. Stay tuned!

One thing that snowboarding and biking have in common is that the equipment required takes up a lot of space. I decided to find  something that could accommodate that better than a 2-door coupe.

I can’t wait to actually USE my new storage space. I will however miss the fuel economy; I have gone from a 4-cylinder 1.6 litre engine to a 6-cylinder 3.7 litre engine.  Click here to see specs for my Liberty from internetautoguide.com. Hopefully having heated seats will make up for the increase in fuel expense. (gulp)

What car do you use to lug around your equipment and how well does it get the job done?

Cheers.

On May 8, Ross is going to attempt to break the word record for a solo crossing of Ontario on a bicycle, while raising awareness and donations for a childhood cancer charity at the same time.

Here’s the full details from the press release:

TORONTO, April 21 /CNW/ – A world record may crumble as Ross Rader gears
up to ride from Ottawa to Windsor in less than 36 hours. Setting out at 10:00
AM on Friday, May 8, Rader will attempt to break the world record for a solo
crossing of Ontario on a bicycle. The current record of 35 hours, 43 minutes
was set in 1987 by Ron Dossenbach of Windsor, Ontario.

Rader is making the cross-Ontario attempt to raise awareness and
donations for childhood cancer charity Coast to Coast Against Cancer
Foundation. “More than 1700 kids are going to be told that they have cancer
this year,” says Rader. “I’ll ride to the ends of the earth if it will make a
difference for even one child.”

Departing from Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Rader and his support crew,
with Ultra Marathon Cycling Association (UMCA) sanctioned officials, will
travel almost 800 kilometers to City Hall in Windsor, Ontario. Along the way,
Rader will pass through Kingston, Toronto, Brantford, London and dozens of
small Ontario towns.

Rader will be supported by a crew of six who will follow him to ensure
his safety and provide him with nutritional, mechanical and mental support.
“The crew is going to set the pace, they are my fuel and the ones that ensure
I break this record,” Rader says. “Without their support, I’m just a guy on a
bike. With them, we’re a machine built for the sole purpose of smashing this
world record.”

For more information or to make a donation, please visit
http://www.crossontario.ca or email Ross Rader at ross@ultrarider.ca.

Best of luck, Ross! Steve and I will be joining Ross and hundreds (maybe thousands?) of others in August for the Tour For Kids ride in Ontario.

The situation is a far cry from the ugly season of 2006-2007, when there was a lack of snow right into January.

So now that winter’s done, what am I gonna do all summer?

I’ve signed myself up for a litany of physical activities in an effort to lose 10 pounds. I put on a good few when I tore my ACL, and I’ve never lost it. I can make excuses until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is it’s due to not enough physical activity and probably too much bad food. I’m hoping a ridiculously active summer will help me lose weight. Eating better will help too.

Here’s what I got planned:

• Ice hockey Mondays, roller hockey Tuesdays, ultimate frisbee Sundays;
• The Sporting Life 10k down Toronto’s Yonge Street in May;
• The Ride for Heart down the Don Valley Parkway, a major Toronto expressway, in June;
• Tour for Kids, a 4000-600k cycling ride in August;
• Weekly cycling rides on my road bike;
• The occasional mountain bike ride down Toronto’s Don Valley Trail.

So I’m planning on a busy summer, and you’ll be hearing all about. Thing is, summertime also means Hoegaarden and patios. Hopefully I can work all that beer off! Hopefully Josh will be here too, and the two of us will also cover next year’s snowboarding season. Because it’s never too early, right?

We had pretty low expectations for the day, as Blue reported 9 runs open, a 50cm base, and discounted lift tickets. Furthermore, Josh had been there a couple of times in March and said the conditions were ass; he said the snow was lumpy and there were puddles everywhere. I prepared myself for maybe two hours of riding and to get very, very wet.

Temperatures hovered around 10 celcius, so both of us were in full-on spring gear mode. I wish I had taken a picture. Josh picked me up wearing a base layer and a Metallica Kill ‘Em All t-shirt (”I used to wear this shirt underneath my clothing,” he said, “but then I realized the shirt was awesome.”). I wore a base layer, Burton hoodie and a pom-pom toque.

Once we got to Blue, we were extremely pleased with what we encountered. There were only nine runs open, but they were nine good runs. Usually when a ski area announces a limited amount of terrain is open they throw in stuff like learning areas as “open runs”. Not yesterday. To add to our excitement, there were virtually no line-ups (unheard of at Blue) and the snow stayed together pretty well throughout the day. Josh and I did run after run until we nearly collapsed; it was a great way to end the season.

Oh, and I did the whole day without a knee brace!