Trip to the snow Mt Buller Australia

[precopster]

We enjoyed a 3 hour drive to our local Mt. Buller snow resort last weekend. The day was overcast and the final blessing was that it actually snowed while we were leaving. The mountain has an altitude of 1300 metres.

The first snow chain hire shop told me I had inadequate clearance between my oversize 205/50/17s and the strut tower and refused hire. The condition of driving up the mountain is that chains are carried. I had around three fingers of room there so we found another shop that gladly hired them to us.

The ascent of around 6 kilometres was done using manual shifting of the 5 speed auto box and a very smooth foot on the throttle. I didn't really want to find out where my limits of adhesion were with 200-300 metre sheer drops on our left. I was wearing near new Dunlop's SP Sport Maxx TT on the front axle and they steered very precisely on loose snow. The rear axle has a generic branded 215/45/17 inch tyre. I had a VW Touareg driver behind me who was itching to drive faster but I drove conservatively.

Once we reached the car park we had a 500m walk to the toboggan run area. The little guy loved the snow and it was his first exposure to this slushy new substance. I received more than my share of hard packed snow throws to the head from my enthusiastic six year old.

The car performed brilliantly on the journey with very challenging heavy rain and night driving on the return. Not once did the car feel unstable or on the limit thanks to those Dunlops and new front struts.

After a tiring day of driving and lots of junk fried food and poor quality diner style coffee we were tired though rather elated at our wonderful journey. The V70 achieved 8.2l/100kms (32 US mpg) on the run of 550 kms of mostly 90-100k/hr driving.