In honour of the Queen (may she long reign over us, etc) we hiked up the highest mountain in the state on the long weekend. Much less pointy and impressive than the mountains available in Europe and Asia and those sorts of places, but high(ish) at 1986m (6516 ft). And snow-covered, which has to count for something.
After parking the car at around 650 metres, we spent most of Sunday going uphill.
Up Staircase Spur, through the singed mountain ash, past Bivouac Hut, past the growing collections of snow at the side of the path, through the snowgum regrowth, and finally out into the open, where it started to get seriously windy.
We ditched our packs for the final press up to the summit. After climbing on top of the summit cairn and admiring the amazingly clear view, we spent most of our time cowering in the shelter of the cairn. With winds around 80km/h, and a temperature of -8oC or so (down to around -20oC with wind chill) it was nice and cool.
After retrieving our packs, we didn’t have far to go to reach Eskdale Spur. Not far, but over the very exposed section of about 100 metres before the spur turnoff, Corey lost his pack cover, Mikey was blown over a couple of times, and managed to break the handle of the snow shovel strapped to his pack (and in the process coming to the conclusion that Blundstone boots really aren’t the ideal snow hiking shoe). Once we started heading down the spur, the wind died down and things became quite pleasant. We dropped down to below 1700 metres, and found Michell Hut, newly rebuilt after the previous hut at the site was burnt down in the 2003 bushfires.
The full moon popped up as soon as we’d finished watching the sunset. Dinner was cooked, no port was consumed, and we all crawled straight into bed (spending some time enjoying the educational ‘Outback’ magazine).
After 10 hours of sleep, the sun finally reappeared, and we hiked the other 1 km of down down down to get off the mountain. The good weather held, my knees held, the car was still there, and we got to meet a ferret.
