Ski Holiday

Personal

Last week, from July 8 to 16, I was spending a week skiing at Falls Creek in Victoria, along with Noveta (mum), Andrew (dad), Lisa (older sister) and Leah (Lisa’s friend).

Leah, Lisa, Noveta and Andrew posed for a photo in their ski suits.

The first few days had shocking weather: it was so foggy, it was hard to see where we were going as we were recklessly flying down the hill with little regard for our own safety. But, by the middle of the week, it cleared up and left a reasonably good covering of snow.

Except for Andrew, who prefers to stay on the easy green runs, we spent most of our time doing the blue and black runs over near the Scotts and Ruined Castle chair lifts. There was a terrain park over there with various jumps, boxes and rails to challenge (and injure) ourselves on. The most challenging of these was a yellow school bus buried in the snow.

The yellow bus is buried in the snow with a steep ramp leading up behind it for jumping and a downhill ramp at the front for landing. The roof of the bus is covered in a special hard plastic material designed for sliding along on skis or a snow board.

Out of 6 attempts, I successfully completed 3 and stacked the others. Luckily, we made it through with little more than a few minor bruises. Surprisingly, even dad didn’t sustain any injuries as he has in previous years.

We stayed in a lodge called Karelia where we spent the evenings in the outdoor spa and sauna, and in the lounge room socialising with the many other families staying there as well.

The front of the dark brown, wooden, snow covered lodge has 2 flights of stairs leading up to the second floor, where the entrance to the main accommodation area is. The third floor has a long balcony stretching almost the entire width of the bulding, with smaller balcony above on the fourth floor. The signs out front read “Karelia Alpine Lodge Accommodation”, and another reading “J.B.’s Restaurant”, which is a restaurant and bar located on the ground floor.

I liked to play scrabble and various other games with one group of boys (pictured below), from 2 families that had come down together from Brisbane; whom I went out skiing with later in the week.

The boys are seated on a couch in the lodge with their parents standing behind, with myself and one of the boys seated on the floor in front.

From the top left, this is Paul, Kelly, Paul (yes, another one) Kathy, William, Jay, Harry, Mitchell, myself and Sam. There’s also another photo of the boys and I without their parents.

We managed to take some photos and a few short videos of our skiing adventure, which I have compiled into a short video (MPEG-4: high quality (14.1MB) or low quality ( 5.5MB)). Lastly, here’s a nice dashing photograph of myself and Lisa in our ski suits.

Lisa and I are standing on the snow wearing our skis with a ski pole in each hand. I'm on the left wearing a red and black jacket, and black pants with a grey stripe running down the the side of the leg. My black beanie, goggles, and maroon face warmer cover my face. Lisa is on the right wearing a light purple jacket, black pants, a white beanie and a pair of goggles.