Mont Dragon Fly Tent – review (kind of)

Posted on by
I have been looking for a new tent for yonks, each year I have said, I better get something that is better suited for alpine conditions. Ever since doing my first snow camp trip with my old MSR Hubba Hubba I have wondered about how well a proper 4 season tent would go and whether it was worth upgrading – noting that really the key difference between a 3 season and 4 season tent seems to be use of a full nylon inner in place of a mesh inner. That air gap between the fly and the inner is what keeps that warmth in. It (4 season) might also help reduce the need for my mega snow walls :) although they are a joy to build :)
I’m by no means a tent guru and my experience is pretty well limited to a couple of lightweight hiking tents and on the opposite end of the spectrum the taj mahal 3 room car camping tent for the minions..that said, that ain’t gonna stop me having an opinion :)

Snow Trees.

Posted on by
Snow Trees.
One of the most enjoyable things about taking photos in the snow is the search for the perfect tree, the tree that stands out and is isolated from its surrounds.
Looking back at my GPS track for the morning and it looks like a crazied lost drunk dudes path! – quite often i spot a tree in distance, barely visible in the fog which looks awesome so i spend 10 minutes trudging thru the snow to get to it only find out its actually not as good as it looked, but then i spot another and so the process continues
This little gum was one of the better ones and coupled with some nice cloud it made for a nice scene.

Snow Trees.

Never take life for granite

Posted on by

Never take life for granite and make sure someone has got your back.

Sometimes in life you just need someone there to break the back of the wind, not to take it all away, but take the edge away.

This little tree and his rock pal were a pair of standouts on this hill up from the Thredbo River, not a majestic snow gum yet, but hopefully one day it will take the place of so many of the old and falling snowgums.


(C) 2020 Gerard Blacklock, all rights reserved

Snowballs at Mount Canobolas

Posted on by

When my mate +David Brodrick tells me there is gonna be snow down to 600 metres I am inclined to believe him, since he has some experience in weather forecast stuff ;) Dave runs a very successful weather information service out of sunny Narrabri and is much more than a bunch of data mined from government BOM site. +Oz Forecast(http://www.ozforecast.com.au/) is great site with a clean simple interface, i recommend adding this one to your bookmarks, there is also some very useful webcams from various weather stations(not on the BOM site).

We had planned to try and get up Mount Canobolas, however with quite a significant amount of snow falling over night meant access was closed, hence the local park at the base of the mountain had to suffice, needless to say there was still no shortage of snow (for australia anyway).

Chaos had a ball playing in the snow (for the first time), but soon realised that whilst snow may appear very fun, it is also very cold and in this case wet – nonetheless this did not deter the snowball making exercise, note the lack of gloves to start with ;)

Techie data:
D7000 with Nikkor 85mm f1.4 @ 85 mm- Aperture: f/4 and Shutter Speed: 1/1500s
ISO 400
out front – lots of snow and a bit of drizzle.