On Thursday, August 28, the grade 5/6 students from Lakes Entrance Primary School went to Mount Baw Baw for a day of snow fun.
Throughout the week we had been watching the ‘snow cam’ with our teachers, hoping to see some fresh snow. We all woke up very early for the bus to leave school at 5.30am. There were 42 students, it was a squashy bus ride and we were too excited to sleep. It took over three hours to get to the destination and we had to stop at the bottom of the mountain to put chains on.
Unfortunately, it was too dangerous to drive the bus up to the summit as it was snowing, so we had to get picked up by a shuttle bus, 11 passengers at a time.
We were put into groups of how confident we were with skiing, and the most confident were taken to put their snow gear on first. The first glimpse of snow was actually on top of the shuttle bus. Inside the shuttle bus, we had a clear view of the snow on the gum trees beside the road. It looked like a scene from a fairytale. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was, like a glistening cloud planted on the leaves of the tall trees, beautifully sparkling in the bright sun.
When we got to the ski hire, we quickly changed into our snow jackets and pants, then got ourselves a helmet, ski boots, skis and poles. Once we were ready, we got straight outside and walked over to meet our instructors. Everyone got to have a ski lesson for an hour in their groups, and we learnt how to stop, turn and use the ski lifts. It was challenging but we persisted.
We were surprised by how lucky we were with the weather, because the weather reports on the internet were all expecting it to be raining and windy, and -1 degrees! Instead, it was snowing lightly and not even that cold.
At around 12.15pm we stopped for a quick lunch, which we had brought with us. Then we had three choices – to go tobogganing for the rest of the time, to have free skiing for the rest of the time or to ski for another hour and then toboggan. The tobogganers then went to return their ski gear and picked up their toboggans. There was lots of sliding, laughing and some epic snow fights. The skiers just resumed their skiing, up and down the hill over and over again, improving with every run.
At the end of the day, the bus came to pick us up at the top of the mountain to take us back to school. We finally made it back at around 6.30pm and we were all grateful to have had such an amazing day full of fun and learning new skills. Lots of students fell asleep on the bus on the way home, we were completely worn out.
The staff and students are grateful to the school for providing the day free of charge for all families. Now in its eighth year, it has become a highlight of senior years at Lakes Entrance Primary.
Written by Matilde Jakobi, grade six student at Lakes Entrance Primary School
