REX - Regional Express

outtahere As I sit snugly in the warm cabin of one of Falls Creek's 14 snow groomers, the moon breaks through the clouds, casting a golden glow on the snowfields spread around me. Geoff and his mighty snow-grooming machine have done their job and the mountain looks like it's covered in beautifully soft, raked cream, every pile and divot made by skis, snowboards, snow bikes and mobiles smoothed over for the beginning of another day on the mountain. It's easy to imagine, looking across these mountains at night when it's so quiet and empty, how things used to be here before Falls Creek was a popular alpine ski resort. The area has an interesting history. The nearby settlements of Mount Beauty, Bogong Village and Falls Creek were once where workers on the Kiewa Hydro-electric Scheme, which was established in the late 1930s, lived. The scheme is the largest in Victoria and was created specifically for power generation, diverting and harnessing water from the Rocky Valley and Pretty Valley branches of the East Kiewa River, which rises on the Bogong High Plains, and the West Kiewa River, which rises near Mount Hotham. The Rocky Valley Dam forms the main reservoir for the Kiewa scheme and can hold 29,000 megalitres of water. In practical terms for lovers of snow, what this means is that even if Falls Creek does not experience big snow dumps, snow can be man-made using the 230 snow guns throughout the resort. In 2010, Falls Creek expanded its snow-making system and now has an area of 110 hectares for snowmaking, meaning the resort can open earlier and have the best possible snow cover throughout the entire season. For those who relish the details, snow is made from pure water when it is forced skywards through the high-pressure snow guns in freezing conditions (-2 degrees wet bulb minimum temperature requirement). Put simply, the drops of water crystallise and fall to the ground like natural snow. 15

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