Here's a very belated trip report.
Seonaid and I headed up on Thursday night, Michael had some tent location problems and joined us on Friday morning.
We hit snow at about the 1300m mark on the way up - a little bit after the snake edwards divide hairpin, and pretty rapidly the snow thickened up and we were into 30-40cm of snow in excellent condition- fresh cover, no icy crust, and we weren't breaking though onto the road. The drizzle we had coming up the mountain turned into steady snow - things were looking good.
We headed straight for the summit (nearly made it in 2WD!) and had a scount around to see if anyone had left any firewood (no sign) but there were the remains of an impressive igloo on the summit- convoluted entrance (ducking down below snow level) and the whole bit.
there was a bit of a breeze on the summit so we made a run for the Barkly River Jeep Track to make camp. It was a wise choice - much more sheltered. We spent a couple of hours setting up camp and making a shelter as the snow was still steadily falling, with bands of "snail" (a cross between snow and hail - imagine frozen bean bag balls) coming though, and some thunderstorms.
We had some lunch and went for a drive- heading towards licola until we were out of the snow at the picnic ground/hairpin at the Lazarini's spur junction. We picked up a tray full for firewood, and headed back to camp.
We had a go at getting up onto the Barkly Jeep track the back way, and Piggles did fine, but Michael was defeated, whcih led to some anxious digging (with sticks, neither of us remembered shovels and Jamieson was totally out) as we were loosing light. Eventually we accepted defeat, and I trudged back up the hill and brought Piggles back around the 2WD road and pulled Michael backwards.
All this time it kept snowing, quite heavily at times, and once me made it back to camp, it was a pretty quick dinner, a beer, and we were in bed by about 7.00pm- the snow was too heavy to sit around the fire.
THe next morning, we made the call that we wouldn't spend another night on the mountain - we had 3" of snow overnight and it was still snowing- so we packed up camp, left everything where it was, and went for another drive. We caught up with Grimbo and Steve from ARB Brighton on the summit and the Geelong Zuk crew, and fitted in some tow snowboarding.
We made our way down the hill in the traffic and got back to Jamieson about 4.00pm, where we hired a cabin at the van park and spent the evening in the pub.
Both of us had an uneventful drive back to home - Michael went back via Mansfield and we cut through to Thornton/Taggerty/Glenburn over the range.
All up, a pretty good snowtrip, and the best snow conditions for some years.
PS it snowed solidly for about 3 hours at Kinglake today...
I've tried for the last hour to post photos. I'll try again but I'm not promising anything.
Steve.
