14/8/1998 – 17/8/1998 Dead Horse Gap – South Rams Head return
Kosciuszko National Park, NSW
Ngarigo country
Participants: Stephen Davies (Report, Photos), John Meehan, Mike Parkinson, Phil Roberts
Friday 14/8/1998
Mike and I left home at 7:45pm for Mike’s holiday cottage at Dalgety. I was treated to a very pleasant, smooth drive down in a brand new Mitsubishi Verda, a stark contrast to my Mitsubishi L300 4WD. Although we arrived fairly late, John and Phil who travelled independently, arrived shortly after. The remaining proposed group participants in John Louis and Ian Burns decided against coming after placing too much trust in the weather forecast. One of rain and more rain.
Day 1: Sat 15/8/1998 Dead Horse Gap – South Rams Head return
This route was reconstructed from memory using Google Earth Pro and GPS Visualizer.
Max elevation: 2035 m
Total climbing: 537 m
Total descent: -537 m
Average speed: nan km/h
Cloudy and unsure of the weather prognosis we headed out from Dalgety for a day trip to check out the snow cover and weather on the mountains. J.M. driving us up made an executive decision and headed towards Thredbo. Here we found dodgy overcast skies with the slopes at the village bare and only patchy by half the way up the mountain.
At Dead Horse Gap it was cold and windy but there was snow from the carpark up. From here we marched to the very top of the South Rams Head range, where the wind had blown off all the soft stuff above tree line to leave a very hard surface which was still being scoured by the wind. We worked our way back down to the usual runs in amongst the trees. Here the skiing was great on the softened top cover. After completing our fill of runs we headed back down, but were a little too late as it had already turned crusty. This downhill run amongst the, at times, close set trees wasn’t much fun.
The only good skiing for the day was on our one standard run just below the tree line.
Having returned to the comfort of Dalgety for the night we enjoyed lots of Green Ginger wine and an excellent meal of Veal Cordon Bleu with Cus Cus.
Day 2: Sun 16/8/1998 Dead Horse Gap – South Rams Heads
This route was reconstructed from memory using Google Earth Pro and GPS Visualizer.
Max elevation: 2032 m
Total climbing: 568 m
Total descent: -428 m
Average speed: nan km/h
We returned to Dead Horse Gap fully laden with gear ready to camp out for a few nights. Arriving at camp by midday to pitch the tents and have lunch just as it started to snow. From then it didn’t stop snowing until mid week with a total of about 70cm falling. The temperature hovered around zero but the snow was remarkably good, especially considering that it was coming from the north!
Climbing the South Rams Heads 16/8/1998
Our snowy campsite 16/8/1998
We had some fantastic skiing once again but were pretty much restricted to the usual hill due to low visibility. We did venture to the top once but as the wind was blowing hard and pushing the snow into drifts, it was difficult to see them due to low cloud cover and falling snow. We registered about 5 – 10cm of fresh snow for the afternoon.
The snowfall picked up even more around dusk and started to really dump. We enjoyed rehydrated Mongolian Lamb and cheese and crackers for dinner.
Day 3: Monday 17/8/1998 South Rams Heads – Dead Horse Gap
This route was reconstructed from memory using Google Earth Pro and GPS Visualizer.
Max elevation: 1788 m
Total climbing: 262 m
Total descent: -402 m
Average speed: nan km/h
The heavy falls continued overnight with around with 20cm to 25cm of fresh snow on the ground by morning. The skiing was just unbelievably great. After waxing the skis to stop them balling up I was into it, heading up again and again to get more. It was very hard work creating a path the first climb up the hill through fresh snow this deep, with any evidence of the previous days skiing totally obliterated several times over. Skiing down the hills was all by feel as the skis didn’t surface during a run but remained hidden under the soft light snow. Sensational. Meanwhile, John M and Phil spent virtually the whole day in their tent! Amongst the best skiing I have ever experienced in Australia, certainly amongst the very best fresh snow skiing for years.
We headed out after lunch, arriving at the car around 3:00pm. Here slushy snow and ice on the road so it was on with the chains. Unfortunately it was only now we found Mike’s new car also had wider tyres than the previous model, so the old chains didn’t fit! A quick test drive verified it would be dumb to go without, so Mike headed off to Thredbo to buy/hire. As there were none the right size at Thredbo it was onto Jindabyne! Meanwhile I filled in my time completing the marking of trial HSCs, right up till Mike’s return on dark around 6:00pm. It had been interesting listening on the radio as Wollongong was copping a pounding with rain, with road closures galore.
We were now, at long last, ready to go – when it wouldn’t – the car wouldn’t start! Luckily the police who had kindly brought Mike back from Jindabyne were still around so we got the jump start and we finally away. The jump start managed to kill the radio, so about 20 bluetooth phone calls to Canberra followed. Mike managed to resurrect the radio when it was found it wasn’t the fuse or anything complicated, just the jumpstart de-programming the antitheft code. Between our conscience, the radio and car phone we concluded we’d best stay over in Canberra at Mike’s daughter’s place till the worst of the Wollongong weather past. Reports coming out of Wollongong were saying it was the worst flash flooding ever (a 1 in 300 year flood), all roads in and out of Wollongong had been closed overnight, there were vehicles being washed away and numerous evacuations.
Day 4: Tuesday 17/8/1998 Flooding
Despite all this we drove straight back into Wollongong the next morning with no worries on the road. After arriving I unpacked, had lunch and headed to work to sign in by around 12:30pm.
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