Snow Venture 2007
Written by Adam Leibhardt and Matthew Ingham (Lyndoch Venturers)
Snow Venture 2007 started very early on Friday the 13th of July. Everyone arrived at the Crafers park and ride bus stop at 5:45 in the morning. There were a few grumpy and tired looking people around the place and that was just the parents! It was a quick rush to get everyone’s gear into the trailers and to have the three minibuses leave by 6:00am for a long drive to Towonga Scout hall. The first stop Pinnaroo proved to be a great fill up, not just for the petrol tanks but also for the hungry Venturers. The likes of Matthew Ingham who, much to our demise, can eat almost anything, and once the kid starts eating there is no stopping him made the most of the break. This stop was also a great chance for the Venturers to start socialising with the other Venturers that were on different buses. The bus trip may have been quite long, and the conversation, at times, quite repetitive; however the bus trip up to Towonga was the start to some great new friendships. The best bus, without a doubt, was the A-team bus.
We arrived at Towonga late that night and headed straight for dinner and ski hire. We were split into 2 groups, the first group collecting the skis, the skis that were going to become our best friends, or enemies, over the next week. The other group went to dinner at the local pizza joint just across the road from the ski hire shop. The pizza place was quite slow in preparing our meals and it wasn’t till a couple of hours later that the last of our group had eaten and left to head back to the Towonga Scout hall for a night of sleep… haha yeh sleep. Nothing sexual between guys at all.
The next morning we got up and every one layered on the clothes that they were going to wear on the ski in. Once everyone was ready we headed down the road to the bus depot where we left the mini busses and our bags with any unneeded gear. We then sorted out all the fresh food between everyone and then we took the hour-long coach trip up the mountain. Once at the top we stopped at windy corner and sorted out the skis and headed across the road to the cross country track from which we were going to depart for the 11km ski to the Bogong Rover Chalet. The ski in went reasonably quickly with the last skiers coming in around 5 hours after departing. Not too bad for Venturers learning to ski for their first time. The weather on the ski in was fantastic with barely a cloud in sight.
When we arrived at the Chalet we started to slowly accustom ourselves to the slightly unusual traditions of the Chalet, for example, if anyone left anything down in the drying room too late then they would get a 2 minute talk at dinner. Some forgetful people such as Adam and quite often Leigh ended up with massive amounts of time to talk. Phil, our Winter Party Leader, gave us a tour of the Chalet, reintroduced us to the leaders, and what each did, and told us about all the fantastic jobs we will be doing over the next week. He then told us that the tour going out the next day would take us to three of the nearby huts. Wallace’s Hut, Cope Hut and Wilkinson’s Hut. Most people were still a bit shaky from the ski in but put their name up for the tour anyway.
Sunday was the first sleep in of the trip. 7:00am how wonderful. The Venturers slowly woke themselves up to their very first flag break out in the snow. It was cold, to say the least. A wonderful breakfast of porridge, cereal and toast was served before everyone was on their way. Lunch was jammed into as many packs as was possible before we left. The Venturers now found that skiing could be so much more fun when you weren’t lugging around 18kg on your shoulders. First we skied up to Wilkinson’s hut, which is just a chimney now, due to a fire accident that happened quite a while ago. From Wilkinson’s we headed to Wallace’s hut. The Venturers had a short break here before we all headed up to Investitures Point for lunch and some down hill skiing. After lunch, which was very tasty and refreshing, we headed down to Cope hut. There was a geo cache point there that Josh and Ben found. The leaders offered two things at Cope hut, to head back home or to do some ski school around Cope hut. So most headed back to the Chalet but a few remained and learnt a lot of new ski tricks, like how to stop without falling on the ground. Although falling on your butt is a delicate skill, and quite humorous, learning to stop properly was incredibly useful but a lot less entertaining.
On Monday we rose to another day of great snow. We were given the option to go on the tour for the day or to stay at the Chalet and go outside if we wanted to. The tour for the day was to go and head up Basalt hill. We first headed to Wallace’s hut and from there we went the opposite way in which to go to Cope hut. We headed down the track and reached the bottom of Basalt hill and left the track to go in real cross country style and started to head up Basalt hill. We stopped around the middle so everyone could catch up and we could regroup. We then carried on to the top of Basalt hill in which there was a great view of the landscape. From there we could see Rocky Valley dam, most of the 11kms we skied in and we could also see some of Falls Creek. We headed halfway down Basalt hill again and stopped at a group of trees where we dropped our packs and did some down hilling. Some idiot (Matt Ingham) carried one of the snowboards on his back and did some snowboarding, which was very rewarding to watch him make a fool of himself.
The rest of the week carried on in much a similar way heading out to see the scenery of the surrounding area near the Chalet. Our skiing improved over these days and there was a lot less stacks than there were on the way in. On Wednesday we had a ‘great’ trip out to Strawberry Saddle commonly know to us as the ‘toilet’, for when we got there, all we did before we left was go to the nearby toilet. It was a long ski there it was about 6kms round trip. Thanks for taking us John.
On Thursday we were snowed in a bit so we held the 2007 Bogong Winter Olympics. We had three activities - pillow fighting on skis, filling a 2L jug with water on skis and going round the Chalet towing the akja (an emergency snow sled) with someone in it. This consumed the entire morning. We then had lunch and a choice to either stay back at Chalet or go for an extremely long and hardcore ski Yep most passed up the hard core ski!
Thursday night was party night and the Venturers dressed up in all sorts of fancy costumes. Four of the boys (Adam, Jack, Leigh and Matt) had stunning dresses and tutus (they were hot). We also didn’t have to serve dinner as the Nobs did it for us. Yeh!
Friday we headed to Investitures Point for all the newbies to be invested into the Alpine Venturer Unit. We lit a fire and cooked our lunch on it and had lots of ham for pig Friday. After lunch a group of people went down the hill and made a giant snowball, which ended up being taller then some people. While they were doing this a group of people went for a tour out to the Rocky Knobs. Despite being told by Phil we could stay and try to finish our gigantic snowman we were told we had to leave (glares by the others). We went back to the Chalet after we reluctantly gave up on the snowman, and helped pack everything up and pack our bags ready for the departure the next day.
Throughout the week various activities were held each night, the Venturers and the Leaders took turns in making up the games. Over the whole week a game of Chalet Cluedo was played where we had to kill someone with strange and obscure objects in different rooms of the Chalet.
On Saturday we got up at 6:00am to do a final clean up before leaving.. Everyone was split into 3 groups - the not so experienced, the reasonably experienced and the experienced. They all left at different times so the not so experienced group left first while the other two did more cleaning up. The ski back to Falls Creek was a lot quicker because everyone was more experienced and had more control with their skis and of course the boys had to wear their dresses and tutus all the way into Falls Creek. It took around 3 hours for everyone to get back to Falls Creek, where we had the choice of either going down Wombats Ramble, one of Falls Creeks green runs, or walking down the road. Most people chose to go down the green run and it was worth it, it was great. When everyone got down we headed down to Oversnow where the coach was going to pick us up. While we were waiting some of the Venturers went down to one of the shops nearby and bought some well-deserved drinks and food. We then caught the hour-long coach trip back down the mountain to the coach depot and got changed and dropped off our skis.
On the way home we stopped at a couple of places but the best of all was Kerang (We seriously love Kerang). We dropped our gear at the Scout hall then headed out to the pub for dinner. It was great and the desserts were so sweet (mmmmmmm) I mean, I seriously love Kerang. The night at the Kerang Scout hall was cold but fun because it was a chance to relax and be able to reflect on the past week up in the snow.
We woke fairly early in the morning (probably due to everyone being woken up by the Leaders) and we all got a coffee, which was much needed. We packed up our sleeping gear and piled back in the buses for the rest of the trip back to the Crafers park and ride bus station. We arrived there about 1:30 pm where our parents were waiting for us. It was a sad good bye to all the new friends we had made but I’m sure we will all keep in touch somehow.
