It’s safe to say it is not an easy summer for the average powderfreak living in the Northern Hemisphere now that snowrecords are being broken in the South. New Zealand has had one of the best season starts in years and some resorts in Argentina got treated with the biggest dump they’ve head in years: over one meter of snowfall in less than 24 hours.
It’s hard not to get jealous looking at all the posts on social media. And it seems it is not just the more well known resorts that are having a better than average season. Even Afriski, where I worked during the past two winters, has had some significant snowfall this season. And that is rather exeptional. Although Afriski does get some natural snowfall every year, it’s no given that it snows enough to ski some natural snow. During the two seasons I spend there, I only saw snowfall twice.
I am not spending the winter there this year, but I did recieve some photos of some friends. Freeriding in the South of the African continent. It might sound like it’s too good to be true, but every now and then it is possible. Thanks to the recent snowfall there was one bowl filled up with snow enough to go riding, and that is something you don’t see every year. It’s safe to say it is a unique experience. There is not a lof of people that can say they have been freeriding in the south of the African continent.
Safety?
You might have noticed by now that on only one of the photos you see a backpack. It still remains the African experience in that way. There simply isn’t enough annual snowfall to create an awareness for avalanche safety. That is something I noticed last year as well. You can really notice that the mountains around Afriski are not as steep as some of the mountains elsewhere in Lesotho and it is hard to find any terrain over 30 degrees in close range to the Afriski resort. You could therefore, considering the terrain and the amount of snow, argue that there is no need for backpacks and beacons, or would you disagree?