Scaling Australia's tallest peak
G was waiting for me at the airport, with his suitcase and we immediately hired a car from the airport, a 2005 Toyota Corolla and drove to the nearest supermarket to buy some supplies. After stocking up with raisin bread (G's and my favourite), cans of tuna (flavoured with curry), muesli bars and 6 bottles of water, we had lunch at Nando's and commenced our drive at 1 in the afternoon. The Kosciosko National Park, one of the biggest in the country is about 200 km in
length and about 400 km (as the crow flies from Sydney). We decided to drive down the more scenic route along the coast, and 700 km and about 9 hours later, we arrived in Jindabyne , a scenic, lake-side town that stands on the entrance to the National Park. In the 60s, the original town was submerged under what is now Lake Jindabyne in the damming of the Snowy river for the SnowyMountains hydro-power project. The modern town overlooks the lake that submerged the old town.
When we arrived in Jindabyne, everything was closed, barring one inviting curry restaurant. I started speaking to the 3 beautiful women sitting and chatting on the steps at the entrance (at the end of their shifts; one of them looked like the owner, and the other two were presumably waitresses. They offered me some curry, but I refused as I was worried about getting to the campsite on time and setting up tent). One of the girls told me that it was another 35 km to Thredbo, the snow-resort town in the National Park, and just outside Thredbo was Diggings, the camping area. I was also advised to drive extremely slowly because the animals had a propensity for darting across the road and committing harakiri at that time of the night. I took their advice, and drove the rest of the way to Thredbo at an average of 40 km/hr, where earlier I was averaging a 100. We reached Thredbo without incident, but the campsites eluded us even after we had circled the town a number of times. By that time however, we were dog-tired and
finally gave in and checked into a hotel for the night.
The next morning, we started our climb to Mt. Kosciosko. We found out that it consisted of 2 sections...the first section, a 5 km walk at a very steep incline of about 60-70 degrees, and the next section, a 7 km walk that wasn't so steep. We had the option of taking a chairlift on the first section, but we decided to climb it anyway. The climb was arduous, to say the least. On flat ground, 5 km should take about an hour to walk, but this took us a couple of hours. All around us were gum-trees. There was water cascading down on one side, and a steep drop to the bottom on the other. Our trail sometimes crossed under the chair-lift, which was inching upwards at snail's pace (it goes at that pace to allow people to mount/dismount without stopping) and at other times, crossed the path of a mountain-bike trail, and we had bikers flying over jumps and speeding down past us. Sometimes the trail would pass a mountain road that went up to the end of the first section. There were steep steps that you had to climb and by the end of the first section (the end of the chair-lift that we could have taken), our knees were feeling like jelly. It was one o'clock, and wiping the sweat off our salt-encrusted foreheads, we
decided to start the 2nd section straight-away so that we had a chance of making it back to the chair-lift by 4:30, when it stopped running. The second section was a far more relaxed climb as the gradient was more gentle. The dense growth of gum-trees gave way to brown-green grassland extending out into the distance with big granite rocks strewn in-between, and balanced against each other, bigger rocks over smaller ones in the sort of way you see in the ghats of south India. A little stream gurgled beside us all the way down, and it was hard to imagine that this was the source of the Murray River. As we climbed higher (my GPS unit told me we were coming up to 2000 metres), the puddles of water trapped in the flat bits of the mountain started freezing over. The hitherto bare or grass-coated mountain-side started to get covered in increasingly large and frequent blankets of snow. It was 2 o'clock and 1/2 an hour before we had to turn back, if we assumed it would take us as long to get back down if we were to make it in time for the chairlift at 4:30.
A couple of weeks ago, I flew in to Sydney to meet my best friend G and we made an impetuous decision to drive to Australia's tallest mountain,Mt. Kosciosko.
G was waiting for me at the airport, with his suitcase and we immediately hired a car from the airport, a 2005 Toyota Corolla and drove to the nearest supermarket to buy some supplies. After stocking up with raisin bread (G's and my favourite), cans of tuna (flavoured with curry), muesli bars and 6 bottles of water, we had lunch at Nando's and commenced our drive at 1 in the afternoon. The Kosciosko National Park, one of the biggest in the country is about 200 km in
length and about 400 km (as the crow flies from Sydney). We decided to drive down the more scenic route along the coast, and 700 km and about 9 hours later, we arrived in Jindabyne , a scenic, lake-side town that stands on the entrance to the National Park. In the 60s, the original town was submerged under what is now Lake Jindabyne in the damming of the Snowy river for the SnowyMountains hydro-power project. The modern town overlooks the lake that submerged the old town.
When we arrived in Jindabyne, everything was closed, barring one inviting curry restaurant. I started speaking to the 3 beautiful women sitting and chatting on the steps at the entrance (at the end of their shifts; one of them looked like the owner, and the other two were presumably waitresses. They offered me some curry, but I refused as I was worried about getting to the campsite on time and setting up tent). One of the girls told me that it was another 35 km to Thredbo, the snow-resort town in the National Park, and just outside Thredbo was Diggings, the camping area. I was also advised to drive extremely slowly because the animals had a propensity for darting across the road and committing harakiri at that time of the night. I took their advice, and drove the rest of the way to Thredbo at an average of 40 km/hr, where earlier I was averaging a 100. We reached Thredbo without incident, but the campsites eluded us even after we had circled the town a number of times. By that time however, we were dog-tired and
finally gave in and checked into a hotel for the night.
The next morning, we started our climb to Mt. Kosciosko. We found out that it consisted of 2 sections...the first section, a 5 km walk at a very steep incline of about 60-70 degrees, and the next section, a 7 km walk that wasn't so steep. We had the option of taking a chairlift on the first section, but we decided to climb it anyway. The climb was arduous, to say the least. On flat ground, 5 km should take about an hour to walk, but this took us a couple of hours. All around us were gum-trees. There was water cascading down on one side, and a steep drop to the bottom on the other. Our trail sometimes crossed under the chair-lift, which was inching upwards at snail's pace (it goes at that pace to allow people to mount/dismount without stopping) and at other times, crossed the path of a mountain-bike trail, and we had bikers flying over jumps and speeding down past us. Sometimes the trail would pass a mountain road that went up to the end of the first section. There were steep steps that you had to climb and by the end of the first section (the end of the chair-lift that we could have taken), our knees were feeling like jelly. It was one o'clock, and wiping the sweat off our salt-encrusted foreheads, we
decided to start the 2nd section straight-away so that we had a chance of making it back to the chair-lift by 4:30, when it stopped running. The second section was a far more relaxed climb as the gradient was more gentle. The dense growth of gum-trees gave way to brown-green grassland extending out into the distance with big granite rocks strewn in-between, and balanced against each other, bigger rocks over smaller ones in the sort of way you see in the ghats of south India. A little stream gurgled beside us all the way down, and it was hard to imagine that this was the source of the Murray River. As we climbed higher (my GPS unit told me we were coming up to 2000 metres), the puddles of water trapped in the flat bits of the mountain started freezing over. The hitherto bare or grass-coated mountain-side started to get covered in increasingly large and frequent blankets of snow. It was 2 o'clock and 1/2 an hour before we had to turn back, if we assumed it would take us as long to get back down if we were to make it in time for the chairlift at 4:30.
Flies are the scourge of the Australian summer. Hundreds of thousands of them settled on our backpacks, taking a free ride on our climb to the top. Many more were intent on settling on our faces, not bothered with our constant, vigorous attempts to brush them off, until we looked more like amorphous, mobile swarms than mountain climbers. At about 2100 metres, there was a rest area with views of the surrounding mountains and a 1.8 km path leading to the peak. At this point, it was already 2:30, but G wnted to push on. He left his bags with me and ran to the top, while I rested on the grass, munching on raisin bread and taking in the views of the surrounding mountains. I made use of the excellent toilet facilities; it was a porta-potty equipped with vacuum pumps to take the sewage into an unseen repository, quite unlike the smelly pit-toilets on offer at camping grounds throughout Australia, where your waste drops into a hole in the ground under the toilet bowl, on top of potty left behind by hundreds of users before you, all in plain view of the user. At 3:00 pm, G was back, huffing and puffing (to his credit, he'd donethe 3.6 km in 1/2 hour, running most of the way) and we began our climb down. This, thankfully, took less time than our climb up and we were back at the chair-lift by 4:00 pm.
Later that evening, we set up tent by the river and wolfed downraisin-toast with curry-flavoured tuna and canned pasta for dinner. Flies, which troubled us so during the day were replaced by mosquitoes in the evening, and I annoyingly, I had forgotten to bring along my
repellant cream. So we sat in the car, sealing ourselves in, listening to music and chatting till late in the night.
The next morning, we drove back to Sydney, this time through Canberra. By the time we returned the car to the rental agency, I had clocked 1190 kms.
It was a satisfying 3 days.repellant cream. So we sat in the car, sealing ourselves in, listening to music and chatting till late in the night.
The next morning, we drove back to Sydney, this time through Canberra. By the time we returned the car to the rental agency, I had clocked 1190 kms.
posted by Jay at 10:54 PM
0 comments
