After years of snowboarding, I first tried skiing at Lake Mountain about a year ago. It was very gratifying to be able to woosh around the whole place a year later :) The snow gums are shooting well since the 2009 bushfires, but the bare branches make it feel as if you are somewhere in the Northern hemisphere instead of Australia. Other tree species growing further down the valley and around Marysville are sprouting fast and the town finally seems green again. When we got home we looked at Google Earth to measure how far we had skied (about 17km). The images are from 2003 and it was eerie to see the township and giant trees where now there are mostly building sites. But building sites are better than abandoned lots.