It hasn’t been a good winter for tramping so far, with southerly snow dumps repeatedly blown off by nor-west gales, which often occurred over the weekend. That was the case with Torlesse scheduled for 19th July. But some of us were lucky enough to go with the Over 40’s on the following Wednesday. See the report in the August Footnotes.

Mt Somers substituting for Mt Binser – Sun 2 August 2015

We had another nor-wester and it’s too far to go to Binser only to stop at the bushline. Just Markus Kaufmann and me turned up at Church Corner and decided on the hardy standby of the Mt Somers from Staveley. Snow conditions weren’t good, but being sheltered on the south face from a moderate nor-west on a sunny day was more than we could expect. Looking at the clouded-in conditions a few kilometres inland from our lunch spot on top reinforced our view that this was the place to be. It was amazingly calm as we descended.

Mt Cloudesley – Sun 9th August 2015

We had westerlies again but they were only moderate and the day sunny. I don’t know where everyone else was, but Peter Umbers, Milan Brisnik and I were happy to be there. As well, a party of eight from CTC followed us up Long Spur. They had planned to climb Mt Hamilton but decided Cloudesley was better in the snow conditions. The soft snow plus icy patches made it slower going. We had lunch on the saddle and didn’t reach the top until 1.50pm. Going down, the weather closed in and started lightly snowing just as we reached the carpark! Wasn’t that good timing.

Hanmer Base Camp – 15-16th August 2015

Sadly that didn’t happen. Only four of us enlisted so I had to cancel it. However, you may recall the weather was foul. Someone reported that it rained and rained in Hanmer. So, no snow trip that weekend either way.