Waay back, in September, we spent a few days up at the KAC lodge at Charlotte Pass, and did a bunch of skiing. We were tagging along with uncle Teepar and his annual trip, they don’t let any old plebs stay at the lodge, you have to know someone reputable. I went a few years back and posted lots of photos, oh gee even more. I had such a good time I’d been keen to take Meg up and show her the slopes ever since.

After a bit of a late night on Friday celebrating Tom’s 30th we dragged ourselves out of bed on Saturday morning and started driving down. I drove for a bit but then needed to have a little lie down, luckly Meg was OK and got us to Jindy. We picked up some skis and gear and raced to the Skitube, just in time to get the connection. Unfortunately when we got to Perisher the snow cat was an hour late due to a break down, so we needn’t have rushed, oh well!

On Saturday arvo we squeezed in a quick ski down the valley just to refresh our memories. Sunday dawned sunny but blowy, but it still looked pretty good from the lodge so we started charging up the Kosciuszko road. We wanted to ski up Kosi but weren’t sure we were up to it, but thought we’d see how we went. The skiing wasn’t too hard up to the Snowy river crossing, but from there up to Seaman’s was very tricky (at least for us novices). With the wind really blasting over the pass and a lot of ice it was hard going. After lunch in the hut we decided to head back, which began with a pretty death defying run down to the river, with the wind at our backs and ice under our skis.

I’ve lost track of what happened on which evenings. Every night there was a lovely three course meal, and often pre-dinner drinks and nibbles. After dinner there was usually casual conversation, mixed in with a bit of political commentary, mostly baiting Rohan, and then to escape from that he would turn to the stereo and get half the room dancing. I of course had sore legs and couldn’t manage any moves on the dance floor, but Roh & Nahd and the rest of the “youngies” more than made up for me.

After a good nights sleep you wake to a cooked breakfast, though you do have to be on the ball, if you’re too hung over you can miss breakfast entirely, which is not a good way to start the day.

Monday was windy again, so we did a little tour around the east of Mt Stillwell. To being with we were nice and sheltered, but then we got a bit higher trying to get a view down to the Thredbo river and the wind picked up a bit. Rather than skiing back into the wind we bailed down a ridge to the east, and after some interesting skiing through trees that tested our skills a bit, we were back down in the valley. Lunch behind a rock and then a leisurely ski back had us chilling in the lodge. After a bit of relaxing we headed out again for a quick lap of the valley before dinner.

Tuesday was our last full day, and the weather looked perfect. We hoed into breakfast and got cracking up the road to Kosi. The weather was completely still, and by Seaman’s we were stripping off a layer to keep cool. Teepar had warned us that the stretch from Seaman’s around to Rawson’s pass was a bit steep and tricky, and although it didn’t really give us any trouble it was definitely a bit nerve racking for a stretch, one slip and you’d be sliding for a long long way.

The east face of Kosi is really speccy in winter, with a big cornice hanging above lake Cootapatmba. It also looks rather steep and intimidating, although I think that’s partly because it’s hard to judge the scale in the snow with no cues. In the end the climb up was pretty easy, with just a few kick turns required on the way up and lots of zig-zagging. The view from the top was superb, with snow covered mountains on three sides, and the steep drop down to Geehi to the west. Although it’s no great achievement we were pretty chuffed to make it to the top in winter, and on only about our fifth day skiing cross country together.

Getting down was a bit interesting, but again just a case of traversing the slope and doing sharp turns, nothing elegant that’s for sure! We decided to avoid the steep section along the road by going up and along the top of Etheridge ridge, it turned out to be a good decision, and gave us more speccy views. After lunch in the rocks above Seaman’s we cut across to the Kosciuszko road, and then tootled along through the rocks above the road, eventually catching the summit of Stillwell before heading down to the village.

After one last night of excellent food and company we woke up on Wednesday not ready to leave. Still we had a snow cat to catch and a concert to go to, so we got packing and managed one last 20 minute ski before we had to head off. An awesome trip, only wish it was longer!

View the photos »

If you like Linux and you like games, then you should head over and check out the Humble Indie Bundle #2!

It’s a collection of five games:

• Braid, innovative and award winning, and previously Xbox only.
• Cortex Command, a sort of resource extraction + action game, featuring disembodied brains.
• Machinarium, a point and click brain teaser game, with great artwork.
• Osmos, where you float around absorbing other blobs, with an awesome ambient sound track.
• Revenge of the Titans, a resource extraction and base building game, think Command & Conquer for the ADHD generation.

What makes it really stand out is they all support Linux, they are all DRM free, and you can choose how much you want to pay.

To top it of some of the money goes to Child’s Play and the EFF. And don’t worry, giving money to the EFF doesn’t make you an enemy combatant .. yet.

They also have data on how much people are paying for the bundle, which is quite interesting. Currently the average amount paid by Windows users is $6.07, Mac users $8.23, and Linux users $13.68. So despite being a band of unwashed hippy communists, it seems Linux users are more generous when it comes to opening their wallets.

ps. Depending on your graphics chip & driver you may need to apt-get install driconf and enable S3TC texture compression to get Braid working, see this bug.