Monday 19/09/2022 Charlotte Pass – Mount Guthrie – Guthrie Ridge – Sam 0321 – Spencers Creek
Kosciuszko National Park, NSW
Ngarigo Country
Participants: Stephen Davies (Photos, Report), Sue Davies
After our successful morning outing, Sue reported feeling much better than she had expected. She decided that she might just be up to trying another short, afternoon trip somewhere close by. As we hadn’t been up Mount Guthrie for many years, off we went.
Max elevation: 1920 m
Total climbing: 346 m
Total descent: -336 m
Average speed: 6.25 km/h
Total time: 01:59:59
We first headed out of the village along Spencers Creek for a short distance before starting a gradual climb up towards the road past Mount Guthrie’s summit. Once up to and across the road, we began our climb. This is reasonably steep in parts so we mostly angled ourselves up across the slope to gradually gain height, avoid any trees and prevent our skis from slipping backwards. At least we had a firm base with some softness on top.
We crossed paths with another skier climbing to the top as well as a few snowboarders who had come across from the resort to get into some off-piste boarding.
Rime plastered snow gums on Mount Guthrie
On reaching the summit of Mount Guthrie we took in and photographed the views. Once done here we headed down along Guthrie Ridge to Sma 0321, a 1938m high peak just under 1km from Mount Guthrie. Here we again enjoyed the views before trying a few turns on our return to the lodge. These turns were proving to be rather futile for me. I was trying out brand new skis and bindings and everything between me and the skis felt extremely stiff. Attempting telemarks was interesting to say the least, as the rear ski just didn’t want to stay on the snow. It seemed rather insistent on maintaining a right angle with my foot and not edge, leaving it to try to nose dive with each attempted turn. I didn’t get many turns in on the descent and stopped even trying after a while.
It took a while to figure out but the binding was way too tight on the boot. Loosening the cable also took a while to figure out as it was quite different to other cable bindings I had owned over the last forty-plus years. Winding the spring didn’t change its position along the steel cable whilst turning the spring, I was getting confused!
On another later attempt, I noticed the heel lever move sideways as I turned the spring. Eureka, the lengthening occurs inside the solid metal heel component! With finally figured out it was easy to adjust by noting how much the heel section rotated to one side and then balancing it on the opposite side.
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