I rubbed my eyes, and reached up to brush the inside of the tent and see how wet it was from the morning dew. It was dry – suspiciously dry. I tried again with my fingernail, and flakes of frost rained down. In fact, Nick’s cheap single skin summer tent was completely frozen. At that moment I just knew it would be a great weekend.

The Guthega carpark was packed with splitboarders. We “warmed up” with a horrific icy run down to the dam wall. Well, it would soften soon enough.

We did a traditional Guthega tour, by skinning up towards Guthega Trig, then down through the trees to the river, then up the other side towards Gils Knob and Mt Tate.

It was still icy up the top, but we found plenty of great corn on the way down.

Laziness resulted in an early retreat back to the torrid nightlife of Jindy.

On Sunday we drove to Perisher Valley to tour out to Mt Paralyzer. We skied up the road to the Perisher Gap, and then up the SW ridge of Mt Perisher to do a quick run on the SW face of Mt Perisher.

We had lunch in the little valley between Mt Perisher and Mt Paralyzer. Afterwards, we left our packs and skinned up to the saddle, then climbed the east peak of Mt Paralyzer.

It was a good run back down. The south facing bits were icy, but there was more good corn. Even the littlest bit of north aspect helps.

Back at our packs, a few of the guys took advantage of a small open section of the creek, for a refreshing bath in the snowmelt. (I’m leaving that video untagged).

The way back was mostly down hill, and we made good time back to Perisher. After walking through the mud and the blood of the village and car park, it was time to part ways.

James, Jim, and Matilda are off down south to Mexico (ok, Victoria) to ski at Mt Buller for Unigames over the next week. The rest of us had to endure the drive back to Sydney once more. Spring’s here, but it seems the high country hasn’t quite made up its mind – as I write this, it’s snowing again.