A first trip ‘round the world, part 28

After a few days at Mt. Buller, it was back to work as usual. In fact we clicked back into our skis the day after we got there, and while I don’t remember which classes were given to us, we got back into the groove almost immediately and without lengthy transition. 

In reality, the last time I was skiing was on May 16, not much more than two months before that. In 1971, Mt. Buller was far from what it is today.

First, there were two competing lift companies and ski schools, and while the Blue Lifts and French Ski School could ski on 5 lifts consisting of one fixed grip chair and the rest a mixture of T-bars and Poma surface lifts. 

Our competitors had 8, but two of them, Summit and Baldy were twin lifts, running parallel to one another. Seemingly, another trick to increase lift capacity, in spite of the fact that a Poma with its detachable platter was moving much faster than a two-person Doppelmayr spring-loaded T-Bar, but had about the same uphill capacity per hour. 

Doubling the lift did the trick and offered superior capacity. The illustration, including the tables has been verified and updated, with lift equipment description and vertical drop for each one.

Today, there are 22 lifts ran by the same company (the Blue lifts merged with the Orange in 1985, as John Hilton-Wood finally purchased half of the Orange Lifts and formed the Bourke Street Ski Lift Company). In 2021, these lifts were said to move 40,000 people per hour, which 50 years later isn’t a huge feat by Alpine or North American standards, but respectable for Oceania! 

In terms of mountain topography, Mt. Buller is a semi-flat ridge where all the easy runs can be found near the village, while the steeper and more challenging trails are hidden on the south facing slopes (remember we’re down-under) but where the usable vertical used to be, at best, around 790-920 feet, so this wasn’t Chamonix and the Grands Montets! 

The top elevation reached by skilifts was 5,840 ft and the village base, where we lived, was around 4,920 ft. Yet, since the good skiing was below the village, the bottom of Federation was at about 4,630 ft and Bull Run as well as Chamois reached as low as 4,730 ft. 

Today, Mt. Buller claims it offers a theoretical 1,330 ft vertical, which isn’t really feasible, if one can ski top to bottom to the new lower parking lots, so don’t even think of running a FIS downhill there! In summary, if skiers began their day from the resort village, they could ski slightly up, but mostly down if they were expert skiers, just like at Jack Frost in Pennsylvania where the base sits… on top! 

To refresh your memory as to what Mt. Buller was like, and see what it became of in 2018, watch this short video. At 15 seconds you will see two skiers cruising down "Summit Slide", a run served by the Grimus triple-chair installed in 1979 and that also reaches the top of the mountain.