Falls Creek Ski Tour 2022 - Falls Creek to Tawonga Huts - Day 2

Falls Creek Village to Tawonga Huts - 1st Sept.

The day started earlyish - around 7am. We had breakie in the caravan park to save time and left the park at 7.45am arriving at Mt Beauty bus deport for our 9.30am bus up to Fall creek. It is really the most sensible way to go as you don't have to worry about chains, entry fees, parking and the drive up and down. All of our gear fitted in easily to the bus and we wore our track gear in the bus. Forty five minutes later we arrived at Fall Creek Village. A courtesy bus took us to Windy Corner and we were on our way by about 11am. We had a sunny day with light winds.

The snow conditions could not have been better - soft snow and heaps of it. We followed the road that took us along the bottom of the ski runs on the south side of the resort - the Ruined Castle, Towers, Drovers Dream side. Following the Sun Valley Loop through to Boomerang Link eventually upto Cattle grid, eventually taking us out of the patrolled area. We skied down Pretty Valley Rd and eventually arrived at Pretty Valley Hut. Along the way whilst we had our budgie bar break on Boomerang Link we saw an echidna waddling up the snow slope looking for food. It was a big echidna. We were certainly feeling the lack of practice and fitness - after several years of Covid lock down it was good to be out and about. We were drinking the appropriate beer at the Bright brewery called Blow Hard. We were blowing hard on the climb upto Cattle grid. Once on the other side of the saddle we lost sight of the last of the Falls Creek chair lifts.

We met several skiers returning back to Falls creek. We arrived at Pretty Valley Hut at about 1.30pm for lunch. The hut is pretty small but fine to stop in and have lunch. Anymore than 6 people in the hut and it would have been super crowded.

Heading out from pretty Valley Hut we made our way down to the start of the dam. We needed to take our skies off to cross the causeway. It was a steady grind following the Fainter Firetrail up to the Ben Cooper Memorial Cairn. We were on the downhill run to Tawonga huts. The snow was very soft and in some parts difficult to ski because occassionally your ski just sunk into the snow with the ski down not without its challenges. We made our way down to the hut incident free.

There are a series of huts, one with bunks, one with a internal combustion stove, a burnt out shed, other shed on the other side of the creek and a toilet shed. All in all a great site and great camp sites that provided shelter from the prevailing winds, not that they were particularly strong. Unfortunately there was no saw - making it difficult to cut wood to fit in the heater. We set up our tents for the night - they would certainly be warmer that the bunk hut.

We got water, fixed broken tent poles and set the fire. With the fire going the hut heated up pretty quickly and was very pleasant and also allowed us to dry damp clothing. John B, Greg and John M cooked dinner - we had Thai Green Chicken Curry. It was a hardish day for some of us and it was great to be able to finish the day off.

I'm pretty sure we will all sleep well tonight heading off to bed by about 9.30pm