A new meaning for "snowballs"

Went to the snow again this afternoon. So many people and so little snow, compared to last Friday when everything was coated in fresh, soft snow and the only other people there were two people on holidays from Brisvegas with a local friend. This time, instead of fresh powdery snow, it was slippery and trampled by the multitude of people up there (and the car park looked like it was covered with slushy, semi-frozen iced coffee. Just think of that next time you reach for the Farmers Union).

Fortunately managed to avoid falling down the mountain/into a snowdrift/etc, though, and took 100+ photos. The way I just go wild with photos may just explain how I've managed to do more than 11,000 photos since September...

While we were at the summit, the sun came out. Although it wasn't overly warm, the snow and ice on the trees immediately started to melt, dripping and sliding off and surprising unsuspecting individuals with icy droplets. I must also note now for the reference of future generations to be careful crawling through undergrowth for perfect photos. When you get poked behind the ear by a frozen twig, it's like all sorts of wrongness. Anyway. The third photo is of an icicle attached to a wattle leaf slowly melting. The sound of the droplets hitting the snow was muffled and somewhat strange.

The friend I went up with made a snowman and then started throwing snowballs at him to try to knock his head off. I managed to knock one of his arms off. She knocked the other arm off. And then I hit the snowman in his snowy groin with a snowball that stuck, giving him what looked like a rather snowy, swollen testicle. Thankfully there weren't any kiddies around at the time. Snowballs indeed.

Needless to say, it was freezing, even when the sun was out. Soooooo good to have hot chocolate and something to eat upon the return from snow adventures, and defrost by the fire.