 Poster: A snowHead
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...are notorious.
Anyone who's driven up these fearsome roads knows how they hang off the edge of perilous slopes, often with no safety barriers. The fate of two women today brings the hazards into sharp relief, after their car plunged 250 metres from the road to Treble Cone. They died, and a man in the car was critically injured. This report from tvnz.co.nz
I don't know how rare an event this is, but I wouldn't want to tackle those roads without minimising the risk. The only one I've been up was to Mount Hutt, and it seemed to go on forever, with rocks strewn across the tarmac. You certainly need 100 per cent concentration and maximum roadholding.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Never having been there I can't comment, but what I've heard is scary. However a very good friend of mine was killed a few years back by falling out of the ski school bus on the way down the mountain in Oz. Maybe our antipodean cousins have a different definition of safety?
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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The injured driver has since died.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2975402a11,00.html
I know that the state of the roads leading up to certain NZ resorts was one of the main reservations I had about my daughter skiing there. My Aussie cousins have deliberately avoided skiing there in the past, after a couple of scary experiences, for that very reason.
OT. I see the victims were from a place called 'Vaucluse'.... established by some early French immigrants, perhaps? (ref. French department of that name in S. France)...
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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*** Warning - massively off-topic ***
Thanks PG for diverting me into a morning of web research, thus avoiding mowing the lawn. Having lived in a flat overlooking Vaucluse Bay from the opposite side of Sydney harbour, I became interested in your speculation on the origin of the name (I never thought about it before).
The district took its name from that of a property in very early colonial times, originally called "Woodmancote". Sir Henry Brown Hayes bought the property in 1803, renamed it Vaucluse and built Vaucluse House, a magnificent building that is now a museum. Sir Henry was Sheriff of Cork, and organised the first transportation of convicts from Ireland. Ironically, he was transported himself, for abducting an heiress. Despite spells in the notorious Norfolk island penal colony (earned for a disrepctful attitude towards authority - very Irish and Australian!) he obviously made good eventually, like quite a lot of transportees.
Never let it be said that Australia doesn't have a colourful history.
What connection, if any, Sir Henry had with Vaucluse in Provence, goodness only knows: I really must attend to the chores now!
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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even further off-piste.....
My turn to abandon the mowing now.... from the NSW gov website
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He spent time on Norfolk Island, Port Macquarie and Newcastle before obtaining a free pardon. He was also the man who named Vaucluse (after the village in Provence, Fontaine de Vaucluse. It is from the Latin vallis clausa meaning enclosed valley). |
and....
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| The origin of the name ‘Vaucluse’ has been the source of endless 20th century speculation since the property was resumed by the government in 1910-11. But one of Hayes's friends, John Grant, wrote to his mother on 28 April 1805, "Sir Henry calls his farm Vaucluse (after Petrarch)’. Petrarch (1304-1374), an important figure in the development of Italian literature (as distinct from Latin poetry and prose), established an estate in the late 1330s, Fountaine-de-Vaucluse, a region east of Avignon in the south of France. Several of Petrarch's poems may explain Sir Henry's identification with the poet's rural retreat. The poem ‘De Vita Solitaria’ (1346) is an exploration of the virtues of an isolated life leaving the individual to experience the pleasures of nature, prayer and study. Another cycle of poems, the ‘Trionfi’ (c.1350), examines the triumph of the human soul over earthly desires. Perhaps the six poems of the ‘Trionfi’ inspired Hayes, in particular, Petrarch's ‘Triumph of Time over Fame’ or the ‘Triumph of Eternity over Time’? Time, of course, is the central issue of a convict serving a sentence and this may have attracted Hayes, this nineteenth-century exile, to this now obscure fourteenth-century poet. |
You learn something new every day....
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| easiski wrote: |
| Maybe our antipodean cousins have a different definition of safety? |
Yes and no I’d say. Like virtually every place in the world outside the UK they don’t rush to ban something just because someone might get hurt. On the other hand, when I was in Australia being taught how to build an igloo the other two (Australian) guys on the course said they were probably on their last ski trip as they had both just become fathers and felt it would be irresponsible to do something dangerous when they had young children to care for. As these were both fit young men it seemed a bit extreme to me!
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Extraordinary. Crocodile Dundee would be disgusted.
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Back on topic, this article about the bad drivers that dice with death on NZ ski roads....
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| easiski wrote: |
| Maybe our antipodean cousins have a different definition of safety? |
Looks as though things haven't changed that much from when I was a boy there (quite a long time ago  ). Especially on back-country roads, it was always up to the driver to decide whether to take on the risk - he could not assume the road was inherently safe - a few clearly were not. I guess the alternative was to have no road going through at all.
I wonder if the amusing variation of having a common rail/road bridge, with cars occupying the same space as the rail lines, not much more that one vehicle wide, and with no side-rails to the bridge, is still availalble. Not that common, but it did happen. I don't recall warning lights for when a train was coming.
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This is from a report in snow.co.nz:
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Mount Hutt ski area manager David Wilson said mountain road accidents reinforced the safety aspect of the access to a skifield.
Drivers were constantly told of the condition of the road to Mount Hutt, and staff worked on the road to ensure it was safe, he said.
"We err on the side of caution when it comes to people using chains ... the road camber is designed so cars will roll into the bank ... (and) we have up to three road patrols monitoring cars every day," Wilson said.
The solution of closing access roads by barriers was not possible, as barriers prevented roads from being cleared of snow and made them more dangerous.
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I suspect it's nonsense. If that was true, Alpine roads would have no barriers. It must be possible to have barriers with occasional gaps for the snowploughs to shove the stuff over the edge?
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