As crowds flock to the nation’s alpine regions with the snow season now firmly underway, questions have been raised over a subtle change at one of the country’s most popular winter resorts.
Alpine areas around Australia, including Perisher in NSW and Mt Buller in Victoria, saw a welcome change in weather patterns late last week with fresh snow after a delayed start to the season.
It prompted boarders and skiers to head out in droves. But with those crowds also came long lines, with footage on social media showing hundreds of people descending on Perisher in particular.
But it was on Sunday that people noticed the Perisher Front Valley snow cam no longer showed the queues to chairlifts as it had previously, with some questioning whether the camera’s view change was a deliberate attempt to conceal the crowd.
“Did Perisher change the angle of the webcam so you can’t see the line at the bottom of the V8?” a man wrote beside two side-by-side images of Front Valley at Perisher.
A picture from Saturday shows the large queue for the chairlift at the bottom of the mountain, while the second, from Sunday, crops above the queue entirely and shows more of the top of the mountain.
On the resort’s website, the new angle remained in place on Tuesday.
The snow cam in position on Saturday.
(Andrew Shipton)
The snow cam in position on Monday.
(perisher, snow cam, winter, nsw)
Andrew Kennedy, Director for Mountain Operations at Perisher, rejected claims the Front Valley snow cam angle was changed to hide the lift queues.
He told Yahoo News Australia that the webcam was recently relocated as part of an upgrade.
“The new position does provide a different view of the ski area and snow conditions; however, our webcams are intended to help guests understand current mountain conditions, rather than monitor queue lengths at specific lifts,” he said.
“The camera is now in high definition and shows more of the snow cover on the top of the mountain near the Perisher Express Quad Chairlift,” Kennedy said.
“The Village Eight is our highest-capacity lift, carrying up to eight guests per chair, which helps keep queues moving efficiently, even when they appear long. It’s the only eight-seater chairlift in Australia.”
Footage circulating online showed crowds flocking to Perisher for the school holidays.
Viewers labelled the scenes as “crazy”, while others said it was to be expected in the holiday period.
Queues forming at Front Valley at Perisher on Monday.
(Andrew Weber)Is the slow start to Australia’s snow season finally over?
Last week, Perisher celebrated the arrival of fresh snow in their daily snow report, showing excitement about the prospect of additional snow continuing to fall in the coming days.
Perisher was boasting 37cm of fresh snow by Saturday, with conditions ideal for a man-made top-up to boot, and the opportunity for the resort’s main eight-seater chairlift to swing into action.
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Ski resorts were struggling to attract visitors during dire conditions for all of June. July began with zero natural snow cover for only the second time in 72 years.
That’s not uncommon for this time of the year, said Pete “The Frog” Taylor, a veteran snowcaster at snowatch.com.au.
High temperatures and humidity had made this season particularly bad, he said, limiting resorts’ use of their snowmaking infrastructure.
“A couple of days ago, it was up there with the worst on record,” Taylor said.
“But with this snow now, you’re not really that far off average for this time of year.”
with AAP
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