Australia is not the first place you think of when you think of summer snowboarding, but as part of the southern hemisphere it is one of the spots that does have mountains, and those mountains do get snow. This means their winter season runs from June to August and temperatures range from 0c (32f) to 11c (50f) in the mountain towns, which drops about 10 degrees in the mountains. Among the many ski resorts in Australia, I was lucky enough to travel to 2 of them:
Falls Creek in Victoria and
Perisher Blue in Jindabyne, home of Olympic Gold Medalist Torah Bright. Both of these resorts are located between Melbourne and Sydney near by the capital city of Canberra.
One downside about going to Australia to snowboard is cost. Australia is not cheap, and to snowboard there you have to expect to pay for the basics (lodging, lift tickets, gas, and food) as well as extra costs of a far drive up to the base of the resort (gas), parking fees and national forest entry fees. One thing I loved about driving up to the mountain however was seeing the wildlife; kangaroos, wombats, parrots and more! Not the typical animals you see in North America, unfortunately most of the sighting were of roadkill :(
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| Falls Creek terrain park |
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| Stylewars is an annual Redbull Event. Tore Holvik |
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| Different type of terrain than North America, gum trees |
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8 man chairlifts fit all of the finalists from the Burton Australian Open Slopestyle event at Perisher Blue.
From left to right: Myself, Hannah Teeter, Laurie Currier, Jamie Anderson, Kimmy Fasani, Reawyn Reid, Liam Griffen and Ashley Wendorf. |
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| Myself, Jamie Anderson, Reawyn Reid, Burton Australian Open podium |
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| Wildlife is also a bit different there. |
Other resorts include:
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