Information For International Visitors
Background
Some overseas people are amazed it even snows in Australia and even more amazed
to find it has ski resorts and excellent conditions for XC skiing. Quite a
number of overseas ski teams train in Australia during their summer.
Even though Australia's mountains are not very high (highest is Mt Kosciusko at
2228m) they are well suited to backcountry skiing because of the generally
smooth terain and fairly stable weather.
Location
Skiing is available across three States in Australia: New South Wales, Victoria
and Tasmania. NSW and Victoria are the main skiing areas with the largest (the
Snowy Mountains) being in southern NSW.
Click here to see a maps of the areas.
Weather
In a good year we can ski from early June right through to early December. The
best XC skiing occurs in Spring (Sep-Nov) when the road is cleared to give
access to the main range.
Temperatures are never too cold (the record min in -22C). Daytime temperatures
in the middle of winter usually hover around 0C and in Spring they are around
5-10C.
It is pretty rare for us to get blizzards that set in for long periods.
Snow Conditions
Snow in Australia is never abundent. We are lucky if we get a 2 metre cover,
although some of the drifts can reach around 20 metres. Even though the snow
reports like to use the word powder it is quite rare that we get anything
that you could properly call powder. This is due to temperatures not being cold
enough and the air not being dry enough.
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