HOTHAM VILLAGE UPDATE - 27 June 08

School Holiday Activities Schedule

Please find attached the Mt Hotham Skiing Company's activities schedule for Hotham and Dinner Plain for the next week.  Many of the activities are free or involve a small charge and we hope will provide our guests with some entertainment during their stay here at the resort.  The guest services team can be contacted on 03 57 59 4468 if you require clarification on any of the activities on offer.  Of course in an ideal world some will need to be cancelled to allow for skiing and boarding! 

Snowmaking

No doubt if you are on the mountain at present you will be aware that opportunities for snowmaking throughout June have been limited with the high dominating central Australia providing warmer temperatures and higher humidity levels.  Crews have been rostered on every day & night throughout June and have made snow at every available opportunity. 

You may not be aware that there are weather stations at every gun (there are 57 guns in total) providing real time information back to the control room at the top of the Playground chair.  The data most importantly includes read-outs of ambient air temperature, humidity and the ‘wet-bulb’ temperature.  It is the wet bulb temperature that really dictates whether a gun is ready to make snow, a wet bulb of -2 degrees generally means we can start making snow.  The system is fired by high pressure pumps that supply water from the Loch Reservoir, because these pumps run at a high pressure there must be at least 5 guns on the line ready for making snow.  The snowmaking system at Hotham is separated by into two distinct lines, ‘Mainline’ (incorporating the new guns on Heavenly  Valley) and ‘Big D’.  Temperature variations within the resort are quite pronounced, for example when looking at the system at 2.00pm yesterday afternoon the wet bulb temperature varied from -1.4 at the top of the Big D to -1.1 at the top of Imagine and + 0.3 at the bottom of Heavenly Valley. 

Thankfully it looks as though some colder air and lower humidity levels may provide for better snowmaking conditions over the next few days with a high chance of some natural snowfalls through the early – middle part of next week.

Bring on the snow!

Adult's event schedule (1681 KB)

Kid's school holiday activities (1405 KB)