The day pretty much starts out as a carbon copy of yesterday. Up early, frozen water pipes, breakfast, and hit the road at 7. Only this time we’re heading south.
Through Jindabyne and then onto Thredbo, there sure is a lot more traffic here than to Selwyn yesterday. We park up pretty close to Friday Flats. Kids into their Ski gear and then over to main area. We end up getting the passes much quicker than I expected.
Up to the area where they sort out the lessons, I overhear one of the instructors say there are close to 250 kids today…. There seems like more!
It’s very chaotic, and they don’t have a fire drill as an excuse. So we queue for well over 20mins or more before being able to drop them off.
Today is a bit different, it’s a full day lesson. We drop them off at 9, and then pick them again around 3.
Kids disposed of, Justine and I walk the 500 or so metres up to the main Thredbo village, I didn’t realise they were quite so separate.
At this time of the morning, there’s not a lot open and it feels like a bit of a ghost town.
After a lap around, there’s nothing for it but a visit to the bakery, not bad for this sort of place. 
(3.5 / 5)
Fortunately, it’s quite a nice day, and while cold, the sun is out and there is hardly any wind.
We think about a trip on the Merritts Gondola, but at $65 each, plus we’re pretty sure they make us buy the $5 RFID card. As it seems like it only goes half way up the mountain we decide to give it a miss.
Coffee, as much to kill time as anything else and we take a walk around Valley Terminal. Around this time we get a call from some Thredbo number…..this can’t be good. Liam’s not feeling well (he had an upset tummy this morning) and doesn’t feel up to continuing.
Liam collected and out of his show gear, we spend a bit of time back at the car and in the Café. Around 3 some kids start to return, we hunt for Caitlin, but there must be dozens of kids in black jackets and white helmets! Justine check with one of the co-coordinators only to learn our guys do come back till 3:30.
Around this time we realise that Liam does not have his stocks, apparently the instructors took them off all the beginners. We’re pretty sure we can see Caitlin’s in the staging area, but no sign of Liam’s.
Caitlin finally returns, and while she had fun, she suggests it was a bit boring. She’d like to do a run or two on her own, but at 3:30 it’s just getting too late, that and as the sun has set over the mountain it is starting to get really cold. Justine finally tracks down Liam’s instructor and finds the stocks. So with a complete set of skiing gear we head back to the car.
Like this morning there is heaps of traffic on the road and we’re in a procession behind a learner all the way back to Jindabyne. Surely the parent could have got them to pull over in one of the chain bays….
It must have been a big day, both the Kids clockout on the way back, but both deny it…. We arrive back just on dusk, there are a few more vans in tonight.
Dinner and bed, at least there won’t be an early wake up tomorrow morning as we’re having tomorrow off.
When planning, I figured Thredbo would either be fantastic as the runs would be so much bigger, or just chaos with too many people around. While the latter won out, it seems the kids just didn’t enjoy themselves as much. Maybe there wasn’t the same freedom that they enjoyed yesterday at Selwyn. So that makes the decision of where to go back to on Wednesday pretty easy.