good morning mt hotham...
A few weeks later I was off again, this time to Victoria for a snowboarding holiday! Ironically there was more snow in New Zealand than Australia (this season was horrendous for the Australian resorts), but that's the way things go. As long as there's enough to make some lines, I'm happy.
From here I flew to Sydney where there was a 5 hour wait before boarding a delayed night flight to Albury. Weather and airport gate delays were to be a common influence in my air travel over the coming two weeks.
I was picked up from Albury by friends who I stayed with in Mt Beauty for a few days. This was like a holiday in itself and was a lot of fun - they're great people with plenty of interesting travel and snow stories (and are as similarly hooked on the TV shows Lost and 24 as I am), and I stayed with them for my snow trip last year as well. Mt Beauty is situated at the base of Mt Bogong near the Falls Creek snow resort, on the other side of the ridge that leads to Mt Hotham.
While I'd travelled to Mt Beauty, friends had headed for Melbourne, and after a few days we met up in Bright and went from there to Mt Hotham. Having never been to Mt Hotham before, booking accommodation ahead of time was a little tricky. The hard part was finding the right combination of location, price and facilities without knowing much about the resort and having nothing except a few tiny pictures on websites to go by, but the place we decided on was great. It was roomy and located close to the lifts while still having a fantastic view. Above is the view from the lounge; it's hard to imagine ever getting tired of waking up to a view like that. After sunset it was a good vantage point for watching the groomers and snowmakers hard at work.