President's Report - August 2008

Well the Winter Group is having a great winter, with so much snow everywhere and so many members getting out and enjoying it from Lake Mountain to the Two Thumb Range in NZ, with the Bogong High Plains in between. Five of us, Anne, Marianne, Martin, Jim and Loch, spent a week at the Rex Simpson Hut at 1300m, a 500m climb up from Lake Tekapo - about 3 hours walk / ski. Once there we skied from the door, using skins to make height to the tops of the main ridges, - up to 2000m on the days when the weather was good and gave us great views across to the peaks of the Southern Alps Main Divide, including the highest Mts - Cook (Aoraki) and Tasman. Some days the weather closed in, snow fell, and time was spent in the hut - comfortable but basic with an outside dunny, a potbelly stove and bottle gas for cooking, but with electric light from a solar panel. And water to be sledded from a spring nearby.

We had decided that the logistics of buying and carrying in all our own food was too difficult so employed the services of the hut owner, Gottlieb Braun-Elwert, a professional mountain guide of long experience. He not only led the way to the best vantage points, he cooked up very sustaining meals from the very limited cooking facilities. He was fit and competent so it came as a great shock to learn only weeks later that he had dropped dead from a heart attack at the hut when he was taking the Prime Minister ski-touring in the same ranges. We are sad for his widow and family. He died doing what he loved doing and did so well in a beautiful part of New Zealand.

I have just returned from the Winter Group annual 5 days at Howmans Gap skiing on plentiful snow around the Bogong High Plains, again with mixed weather, but again with at least some skiing every day with a good group.

There have been many small groups enjoying the good snow at Lake Mountain - ring around if you are thinking of going and see who you can join up with.

Winter Group now has a website, thanks to the efforts of those much more computer literate than I. We hope that this will expose us to a wider public and help to maintain and perhaps increase our membership. The committee is

working on suggested changes to the constitution to make it more relevant to our present circumstances. These will be presented to a special meeting later in the year for discussion and adoption if approved. Suggestions can be sent to the committee meantime.

I hope to go snowcamping /skiing in the Snowy Mountains in September - ring me if interested. See you on snow or at a pub night.

Loch Wilson President