Spot check: Charlotte Pass with A Loose Alliance.
Charlotte Pass is the highest resort in Australia and isn’t accessible by car for most of the season. There is one chair lift, one T bar, one poma and one rope tow. These give you access to a fairly large bowl (about twice the size of Smiggins for those that have ridden there).
Transpot: To get there you need to either hike in (which you need to be experiences to do, don’t try and walk it without looking in to it) or take a 30 minute cat ride up there. The Cats leave from the tube terminal at Perisher and start running from around 730am..
Tickets: You can get your ticket at the Charlottes desk at the tube station at Perisher. $95 gets you a return cat ride, day pass and lunch (I had the vege burger, which was really nice, 7/10. It would have got a 9 but the bread was a plain white roll and it came in a styrofoam container, which was unnecessary).
Accom:: Accommodation is available at the main chalet or in a number of private lodges, alternatively stay at Perisher or Jindi and catch the Cat over.
Park: Unfortunately I didn’t get to test their park or get any footage of it as it was under new snow completely; A problem that I wasn’t particularly upset about.
Staff: The staff were excellent and very friendly. They let me use their oven to dry my inserts for my camera, the cat driver Gray offered to lend me his gloves for the day when I lost mine and Rolf from mountain operations helped me out when I injured myself by contacting doctors and making sure I was ok to get home.
Here is some of the footage from when I went up to Charlotte Pass the other weekend and was lucky enough to get to ride some new snow up there.
Over all I’d give Charlotte Pass 8/10.
It is definitely worth checking out, even if its just a day trip. It is ideal for days when there is new snow, as there are drops all over the place. It is also easy to hike to a number of really good runs that can’t be reached by lift.
Pros: No lift lines, we were there on a Sunday with between 15-20cm new snow and there was no lines at all. You end up chatting to all the staff and meeting everyone that is riding. A bit bonus! The staff are super friendly. The lift ticket was cheap when you consider that you get transport and some food included.
Cons If there is no new snow, it might get boring riding the same few lifts, especially if you are there for more then a week. The park might be the saving grace there, but I didn’t get to check it out this time around.
Crackers!!! totally enjoyed that especially since I’ve never been up to Charlottes myself. Looked so nice but so sucked about the knee!
Crackers!!! totally enjoyed that especially since I’ve never been up to Charlottes myself. Looked so nice but so sucked about the knee!
Thanks Bracer! I highly recommend heading out there at least once. Its worth it just for the cat ride alone if you have never done that before.
Thanks for share with us and we wondered what does Charlotte Pass looks like…
Epic when the pow day and no line!!!
looks fun!
Charlottes is on our to do list, and def this yr!!!
Maybe we should do a day trip at the shred?
Maybe we should do a day trip at the shred?
Except most people have season passes or have paid for their passes.
Better to actually plan a trip to Charlottes.
+ in September, you can’t really expect much snow out there.
Charlottes has a lot short season than the other resorts. they don’t open til late June and close prior to Oct LWE.
They currently have a promo that $2 Tuesdays or something like that where on Tuesdays you can get a second day pass for only $2 (it maybe $4 but either way 2 people for under $100 and you get a free lunch!)
Crackers - I totally agree with you about the burger - it was ok (for a freebie) but they could do so much better with little effort!
With no fresh snow it can get very repetitive. I would love to go out there when there was more snow and people knew where to hike for some good lines. I went twice last year and pretty sure the poma (where the good stuff is!) was closed :-(