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St Arnaud Ridge - Part 01

April 25, 2024

St Arnaud Ridge - Part 01
After many seemingly endless weeks painting in the studio and in the middle of the school holidays before the first winter snow, the perfect weather window approached. Boots, packs and gear were scattered throughout the house half packed and ready to go, however I was still only half committed. The looming dread of listening to the kids 7 & 8 fight, whinge and moan while I carried over a third of my body weight up 1100 vertical meters to start was not very appealing.
For ages I’d been wanting to take the kids up past parachute rock up to the St Arnaud ridge to explore the tarns and traverse along and down powder valley to the south.
So to get motivated and with 3 and a half hours until I wanted to leave the start of the track (to get camp set up before dark) I called a like-minded friend and suggested that her family might want to join me then continued packing. 10 minutes later they were committed, all go, fast packing, dog with the dog-sitter.
From there things fell into place, we left on time, and the kids instantly grouped together and took off in a pack chatting away and making great progress - we were barely keeping up, in fact we didn’t keep up from parachute rock to the ridge!
As the evening shadows dropped into the basins and night cooled we were left to relaxingly set up camp and cook dinner while the kids repeatedly slid down a big slippery snow-grass slope. More to come...




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