It’s Thursday morning, mid-week of snowboarding at Perisher,
and Alan and I finish our breakfast and head straight for the oversnow to
Charlotte Pass for the day. The day-tripper ticket gets us return oversnow from
Perisher, a lift ticket for the day, as well as lunch, but today we have
something a little special planned.
After getting a taste for the backcountry on our 3 days of
guided tours out of Thredbo last year, we are using our day in Charlotte’s to
visit Mt Stilwell, a mere 800m from the top of the chairlift and only just
outside the resort area.
The weather today is clear and crisp, with still enough
fresh powder around from yesterday to make the skinning/ snowshoeing easy.
Basically we had the perfect conditions and we got up the mountain in no time!
Having succeeded in our goal of visiting Mt Stilwell, we
decided to continue on to the ruins of Stilwell Restaurant. This restaurant was
the halfway point of the old Thredbo to Charlotte Pass chairlift which operated
in the 1960’s, and is an easy 1.2km walk from Mt Stilwell following the
well-established route marked with poles.
Exploring the ruins is quite interesting, and as you can see
below it’s not long before my urge to climb all the things kicks in! We finish
up at the ruins by having a “quick bite at Stilwell Restaurant”, then
high-tailing it back to Mt Stilwell, where we don our respective skis and
snowboard and ride an epic line down the mountain and back into the resort
area.
It is always a great tree run on the way back to the town
centre at Charlotte Pass, but with my GoPro in hand this time I think this
might be the best footage I got this week! Please note the slight
accidental/non-accidental roof ride and jump/fall off towards the end… Oops!
After lunch we head to Guthrie’s Peak, which is still in
resort area but did require a 300m walk up from the top of Guthrie’s Poma.
While it’s really only one drop in through Guthrie’s chutes before finishing
off the rest of the run of Lenny’s Leap, it was a fantastic view from the top
and well worth the walk up. The footage will never do the angle justice, but
trust me, it was steep!
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