David and Enid at summit of Mt. Kosciuszko
Happy New Year!
We celebrated the start of 2011 by climbing the highest mountain in continental Australia today. At 2228 m, it’s not really much of a climb, especially given the condition of the trail. We took the route in from Charlottes Pass, up the old road that climbs very slowy from an initial altitude of 1820 m where we had parked our motorhome almost a kilometre from the actual start of the trail. There isn’t any real parking area at the trail head so everyone parks along the road. We found a nice flat spot that we could get our motorhome into along the south side of the road, but we did have to then walk a total of 20 km today, instead of the 18 km that is listed in the guidebooks.
The day was incredibly windy, with gusts that must have approached 50 km/h. When the man snapped this picture for us, his hat blew off. Fortunately someone else caught it, or it would have continued on over the side of the mountain. There was also some rain, though never very much. We started on the hike wearing our shorts and short sleeved shirts, but when we’d reached the Snowy River it was starting to sprinkle, so we put on our rain jackets. It wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t really cold either, probably somewhere around 15 C. However, we met a couple of men who had been in camping overnight as they were hiking out, and one had a scarf over his mouth! At least they had enough clothing. We saw several very young children in light tee shirts at the summit of the mountain, and they were obviously cold. A park ranger gave a couple of them disposable plastic raincoats to wear. She also talked to us as we met her at the Seaman’s Hut, and she said that the weather was predicting thunderstorms. “But you look well equipped,” she said.
Seaman’s Hut is a shelter built as a memorial by the parents of a young man who died in a blizzard in August 1928. We signed the guest register and I commented that it wasn’t very cold compared to what it would be at home in Saskatchewan on January 1.
At Rawston Pass there is another trail that joins the road on which we were walking (this old road was closed in 1976, but park vehicles still use it) and the highest public toilet in Australia. This other trail is from the top of the chairlift from Thredbo, and by taking this route you avoid almost the entire climb, minimal though it is, at a cost of about $30 per person. It still is a 6 km walk in, but it’s almost flat and this is the route most of the people took today, especially the young children, and the unfit (and unfortunately Australians seem to be as fat as Canadians). A few people hiked in the longer route on the road as we did, though most of them on that route took bicycles. We did see two families pushing baby strollers up the hill, though we’re not sure how far they got. One of them at least turned back at Seaman’s Hut; the other’s we don’t know as they were just starting uphill near the start of the trail as we came back.
View from the trail to Mt. Kosciuszko, looking west
Though the wind was miserable, the temperature was actually quite nice for walking. We wore the legs of our pants on the way down, and didn’t take off our jackets until we were within two kilometres of the trail head. The morning on the way up was cloudy, but there were breaks in the clouds to the west as we descended, so we got some nice views into the Snowy Mountains from along the track. There were still a few hanging snow banks in valleys on the south sloping sides of the mountains. The ground off the trail still has residual snow water or rainfall moisture, as there were many small creeks flowing from the sides of the hills. The alpine flowers were blooming profusely, so all in all it was a very pleasant walk.