^ Snow today at lunchtime was the perfect antidote to feeling like I'd been inside too much lately. It was utterly bracing. Within minutes of getting out of the car, my fingers were numb and I was fumbling with the camera and my phone until my fingers defrosted.

It could have been the hypothermia speaking, but it was quite pleasant up there - not utterly, completely freezing like the one time last year where the wind went through you like you were a cheese grater with extra holes drilled into it.

Apart from the luscious crunch of walking through snow, the colour, the way it blankets everything, turning the world into a winter wonderland, the feeling of flakes falling on your face and all of that sort of thing, it's amazing how it makes things either very, very silent or somehow amplifies echos. And there's that strange sort of almost hissing noise when the flakes are falling.

It's sort of eerie, in its own way, but lovely.

I wandered ahead of the people I was with and was staring into the dense bushland, thinking how quickly silence would just envelop you if you walked into it. How disorienting it would be, too. Rather Picnic at Hanging Rock or something. But of course, without the panpipes and future Nescafe ads.

*cue: "Della? Dellaaaa? DELLLLAAAAAA?!?!?!?"*

*ahem*

Anyway. I love the snow so very much.

^ I found a dead wombat in the snow this morning, lying in a trickling stream that cut its way through the thawing snow. This is why you should always think twice about drinking water from fresh mountain streams...

Also, on the way down the mountain, we counted about 90 lyre birds and nearly ran over three of them. They literally hurled themselves in front of the car as if their will to live had expired and there wasn't anything to go on for.

And now for something prettier:

^ More snowy goodness.

Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot...

It snowed! And such a lot. Hurrah!

In other thoughts, the bus I was on yesterday nearly ran a guy over. He just stepped out onto the road right in front of the bus and the driver slammed on the breaks, stopping literally centimetres from the guy. I think the guy was a few sandwiches, a cake, bottles of lemonade, a picnic rug and a sunny day short of a picnic. At least we didn't run him over. It would have been a bit too weird and involved too much time making police statements or something.

But the snow. The snow is way better! The whole time we were there, it snowed. Either just gently falling flakes or blasts of them that would sting your face as the wind swirled them around. There's nothing better than crunching through fresh snow, sinking down into it, kicking it around, randomly being pelted with it by the friends you go up there with...











Also, we had to keep shaking off the umbrellas or the snow would try to make them close. Surprising how heavy it is for delicate little flakes...

The Top Five Things I Love About Today

1. Snow!
Spent about an hour and a half running around in knee-deep snow this morning, hurling myself into it occasionally, taking hundreds of photos, being the only people up there for almost all of the time, falling into drifts, trees coated in snow looking like they're from a Christmas card sceen, the feeling of taking a step and sinking deep into the snow, freezing fun.


2. Hot chocolate.
Put Milo in a thermos at 7.30 this morning and it's still steaming hot right now at 12.30. The perfect thing for after an hour and a half of brrrr. Put a bit too much Milo in for the amount of water, but chocolatey goodness. Hurrah.


3. My Anorak.co.uk anorak.
It's waterproof, lightweight, traps the warmth and you don't get overheated like with normal big bouffy jackets. Plus I won it in a caption competition years ago. Yay!


4. This cute little bird.
Right at the sumit, there was this little bird. Somehow managed to catch him mid-jump. He was shivering a lot and I think was hanging around hoping for food or something like that.


5. Fire.
A nice warm fire when I get home. Mmm... Although I found that I felt less flu-y when I was out in the freezing cold. Perhaps it was hypothermia.

Lunchtime Snow

Because I am a deeply practical woman at heart, I wore knee-length, stiletto-heeled leather boots to the snow. But they were warm! And I didn't manage to fall over. There are plans to go up to the snow at some unholy, early hour on Friday to make the most of it all (and hopefully avoid being stampeded by people who also wish to partake in a wintery wonderland). More sensible shoes shall be worn for that - perhaps a flirty cocktail evening style shoe with spangles...


Apart from being able to see lots of tourists, etc, there was a fantastic amount of snow to be seen. This is looking through some gumtrees at the slopes of the next mountain over. Such a lot of snow! Are you bored of snow yet? I know I'm not ;)


On the way back, the clouds were over the other mountains with snow involvement. Disappointment! But it was good to be heading away from the freezing-ness that was back up the mountains. No gloves = fingers feeling miiiiighty frosty. Which makes taking photos an adventure.

All-new and with even more snowy goodness!

Woke up this morning to snow.

SNOW!!!

Well, not at the house although sleet fell in the night, but on the mountains behind home. Never, ever seen snow on them before. So beautiful and of course I have to whip out the camera and snap some pix through the fog. It just gets better and better as I walk up the road and see all of the other mountains across the valley coated in a thick layer of snowy goodness.


It just gets better as we get closer to work. Snow on all the mountains. Hurrah! A guy at work says that there hasn't been snow like this around here for 15 years or so. So hard to concentrate on work when there's snow to look at. Everyone's been taking photos out the windows.

Because you can never have too many photos of snow, really.


I love snow! *insert appropriate school-girl style giggle*

More Saturday Snow

Snow, more snow! Always with the snow!

Snow down to 500 metres or thereabouts today. Aaaaaand jolly cold, dark, freezing, etc as you'd expect Winter to be.

Also, I hate the 'flu.

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.

Friday Snow