Winter

I am always a little sad when I have to concede that winter is over, but as the last ski lifts stopped turning today, I figured I had better do a bit of a blog update and catch up on our winter.

As we now live in the tropics, winter this year has been a little different.  I have been described by other snow goers as ‘hard core’ this winter, that may be something to do with driving over 2000km each way to get to our closest snow, or fly.

Of course we make it all worthwhile with our luxury 5 star accommodation below the snow line once we get there …

Seriously though, as I ride up lifts on days like this …

… and get clear empty runs like this, it really is worthwhile.

Balin was also much more interactive with the snow this year and loved stomping around in the white stuff

Snot Face?

I even get hugs in the snow :D

Perisher Base

Balin was the smallest/youngest solo toboggan rider on the hill, and definitely seemed to impress a lot of people with his smiles and giggles.

And of course he had to get an early start on the snowboard.

I am sure that these photos are more than enough for most, but just in case they weren’t and you want to see some of our other favourite snow photos just click on the link below.

Winter 2011 - Thredbo & Perisher, NSW

Staying more locally the rest of the winter, we got up to some other adventures too ...

Now before anyone asks, Noëlle avoided any snow activities, she threw a few snowballs and I pulled her on the sled – If she hadn’t had the threatened miscarriage then she would have snowboarded, she did with Balin and further along in the pregnancy.  As for our activities below, Noëlle was already pregnant, but when we did them there had been no problems and she was still in her first trimester, and neither of these activities presented any significant risks.  Also none of these activities were the cause of Noëlle’s threatened miscarriage.  I know some people would choose not to do them, and would think that we are not sensible for doing them, especially considering how long it has taken us to have successful pregnancies.  In the end we are who we are.  Noëlle was very active all the way through Balin’s pregnancy, we have always done plenty of research on the risks of any activity we do, and since the haemorrhage and threatened miscarriage Noëlle has been very limited in her activities -  I think that she is quite keen to get more active again after this pregnancy.

So back to the catch up – one of the great things about where we live right now is access to great diving locations.  A while back we decided to do our first autonomous paired dive, no dive master, just us.  We rented our gear and headed to what we hoped would be a more protected bay, as the sea conditions were pretty choppy and we were doing a shore dive.

The location was beautiful.  We have really struggled to find climbing spots since moving up here, and while there is no serious climbing at this spot there are some great bouldering rocks to perfect skills and just have fun on without the hassle of having to set up any ropes.

The visibility was really low, as we had been warned, this meant compass navigation once we were under water and having to keep very close to each other. 

Despite the visibility issues, as long as we stayed very close to reef outcrops and bommies, we actually saw a lot of coral formations and fishlife.

We had a total underwater time of 1hour 5 mins as we were both on large tanks and shallow diving, but when we surfaced, the currents were pretty strong and the tide was on it’s way out, making swimming back to shore pretty tough, we decided to swim in submerged with our remaining air, but after Noëlle lost sight of me twice, we decided to head straight in to the rocks on the surface.

Noëlle will tell you I saved her life at this point (of course many would say that to save it, I first had to put it in danger, however, Noëlle chose/arranged the dive location and chose to do a shore dive with no dive master, not me).  Anyway, I saw how tired Noëlle was in the strong currents, and decided to head in to rocks rather than use the extra energy to aim for the more distant sandy shores.  Exiting by rocks on a changing tide is pretty rough, especially in full dive gear.  After helping Noëlle swim against the tide and current, I went in first, and made it up the rocks, where I signalled Noëlle to come in, and then pulled her up on to the rocks.  It was a long walk back over all the rocks.

We have both been back in the water since, with a dive master, I am glad we did this dive, and we will do another autonomous dive after this next bub arrives.  It did shake Noëlle up and reminded her how powerful the ocean is, but I think it is healthy to have a little bit of fear, it helps to prepare better for the unknowns of this sport.

One of our other winter highlights was doing a flying fox through the rainforests near us.

I will admit that, as it was just the 2 of us doing the course, it went pretty fast and therefore seemed quite expensive for what was really just 2 zip lines.  There was a reasonable hike through the rainforest to each zip line, and flying through the tree tops with bats flying around, and rivers and waterfalls below us was pretty cool.  It is great that it is just a short drive for us.  If we do get visitors while we still live in this area I would definitely do it again.  It would be great in a big group.  Otherwise I would love to do one of the bigger trails further north.  I think part of the reason that it went so fast was that we wanted to do the zip lines as fast as possible, whereas our guide said we should just cruise slowly along and even stop to take it all in.

I guess we are just adrenalin junkies and need the speed!