Winter Solstice at Mt Mawson 2016
The STSA held its Winter Solstice committee meeting in Hobart on a cold dark Hobart winter night whilst snow was falling at Mt Mawson. There were no red lights or swims, but nonetheless a clear focus on the joys of winter activity in Tasmania.
Following the successful 100th Anniversary Celebration of Mt Field National Park there has been a great deal of activity to prepare for the Mt Mawson ski field for what could be a bumper season. Peter and Karen Davis have repaired fallen snow fences on the Uni run, and installed new lifting pulleys and ropes to avoid the tow ropes being buried in the snow, and Craig Larsson has spent time out at Rodway working on the fuel injectors for the Rodway tow motor. By far the greatest achievement, however, has been the extraordinary effort put in by Ian Stewart to build and install new camera enclosures and electronics enclosures for the webcams at the the top and bottom of the Mawson run. Ian’s design includes the ability to remotely defrost the cameras by heating the glass, with the cleared images then being beamed back to be displayed on the Mt Mawson website. Ian has put in many hours both at home and on the mountain to get this system working as reliably as possible, in what is an extremely challenging, remote environment. The big advantage is that we can all now view images of the snow building up from the comfort of our homes and offices, together with measurements of the temperatures at the top and bottom of the Mawson ski run.
New STSA Summit Camera at Mt Mawson – elevation 1320 m
Indications are that we may be in for another good snow season. Stay tuned for updates on when the tows will commence operation.
