A night at “Everest Base Camp” with an Aldi Tent

Well, maybe not Everest Base Camp but it felt that way with the winds during the night and I wasn’t sure the Aldi tent would survive.  But more about that later!  This was a David S Adventure and he’d invited me along and I’d invited Gl M.  We were going to try snow-shoeing with him at Perisher Valley and camp out in the snow.  None of us had snow-shoed in the past, but how hard could it be?  Sounded like a great adventure, right?

David’s plan … take the Skitube up to Perisher and then walk up to Porcupine Rocks and find a place to camp, do a bit of exploring and return on the Sunday.

This would be Gls’ second overnight walk so she was very brave to attempt it, AND on snow shoes!  We got all our stuff together and made sure we had enough to eat and that we’d be warm enough in the tent.  I decided to take my 2 person Aldi tent that we would share, although it weighs more, the fabric isn’t as thin as my other tents and we were taking Gls’ trangia as my gas stove wouldn’t work so well in the cold.

We headed down to Sydney on Friday afternoon, picked up David along the way and continued down to Cooma where we spent Friday night.

David had his own stocks and snow shoes but Gl and I had to pick up ours at Jindabyne. When we stopped at the shops, someone tooted a horn and who should be passing by but my son David and grandson Bailey on their way up to ski!  With thousands of cars driving by, what were the odds of that!

We got the snow shoes, over-boots and stocks and I picked up 2 snow pegs for my Aldi tent, I didn’t buy more than that because I didn’t think that they’d fit through the loops and anyway, the tent was free standing, with us in it, it wouldn’t be going anywhere (how’s that for naïve).  We had a BIG breakfast at a coffee shop and then headed off for Bullocks Flat and the Skitube.

Gl and I hadn’t been on the Skitube before so this was an adventure in itself, taking us all the way up to Perisher through this massive 6.3k tunnel, sometimes 550m underground.  We arrived at Perisher and put on our over-boots and then started walking in the slush and churned up snow to the Porcupine walking track which we were going to take up to Porcupine Rocks.

We didn’t have to put on the snow shoes until we got into some deep-ish snow but even before we put them on, David accidentally walked over a snow-covered creek and went up to his ankles in water, this wasn’t very good as his shoes and socks were now wet.

After a couple of 100m we decided to put on our snow shoes and get right into it.  In actual fact the snow shoeing was really easy, the hard part was the heavy packs that Gl and I were carrying, but we soldiered on.  I have to admit that I was looking into the snow gums thinking that we were passing some nice places to camp, but too close to civilisation.

Eventually we reached a fork in the track so we dropped our packs and started walking up hill to Porcupine Rocks.  David pointed over to where he thought we’d camp, it was on the side of a hill with sort of a cliff above and rocks around it and looked like it might be out of the wind but Gl and I both looked at it and thought “avalanche”, we weren’t too impressed, plus it looked to me like a long way away to walk with the bloody heavy packs (we’re sounding like wusses now aren’t we!).

Anyway, we walked up hill, much easier going without the packs.  We were about 1/3 of the way to Porcupine Rocks when we passed a spot that looked like a good campsite, it was flat, had a couple of large granite boulders to shelter behind out of the wind, and lots of dead snow gums which would be good for a camp fire.  We eventually persuaded David that it was a good spot so we went back picked up our packs and brought them back to the “campsite”.  We made the concession that if anything better presented itself on the way to Porcupine Rocks, then we’d come back and retrieve the packs for the “better” campsite.

So, we started back on the track to Porcupine Rocks taking the time to check out some untracked snow.  By this time the wind had picked up quite a bit and when we got to the saddle before the Rocks, we decided that we wouldn’t bother going to them (only a couple of hundred metres away but very exposed), so we’d instead go up to the trig at Duncan Peak.  So, off we went, off track on our way up to the trig.  Along the way there was a bank of snow just calling out for Gl to make a snow angel in it, didn’t quite turn out how it was supposed to but Gl had fun!

The Peak wasn’t too far away and when we got to the rocks we took off the snow shoes to climb to the top, Gl very wisely stayed down the bottom.  When we got up to the top, the wind was incredible, so strong that I had to hold on to the trig to stop from getting blown over.  The view up the top was amazing though and worth the effort, we could see all the way down to Bullocks Flat and the Skitube.

Back down out of the wind we made our way along the top of the ridge and came across an absolutely fabulous campsite, although very exposed.  David tried his best to convince us that it was worth returning to it but Gl and I were pretty adamant that we wanted to spend spend the night behind the big rocks out of the wind, which I might say at this time wasn’t all that bad!

Anyway, back at the campsite, we set up the tents, Gl and I in a bit of a bowl and David up a little higher.  With the wind in mind, I packed snow around the sides of the tent and used the two snow pegs and a guy rope attached to a tree.  It didn’t look like the tent would be going anywhere particularly with Gl and me inside it!

We then set about boiling up water for a cup of tea.  This is when Gl found out how important the lid to the trangia was (which she’d left at home because she was cutting down on weight).  It took forever for the water to boil.  In the meantime, I set about trying to light a fire for us,  with the gusting wind it wasn’t easy but eventually we got a fire going so we could also boil the billy in the fire.  You couldn’t really stand around the fire because the wind was gusting so much that sparks were always flying dangerously close to our down jackets and waterproof overpants.  Dinner was a rushed affair, as soon as the food was hot you had to eat it quickly because it was so cold that the hot food was cold before you finished it.  David had his meatballs (minus the parmesan cheese that he’d forgotten about) and Gl and I had curried sausages (thank you Gl, they were delicious).

By now it’s dark and the wind is very, very strong, it was cold and visions of hot chocolate around the fire evaporated, by 6pm we were all in our tents and sleeping bags out of the wind.  David was in his tent drinking red wine and eating cheese and crackers and Gl and I played Gin Rummy until about 7.30pm and then tried to go to sleep.  I was toasty warm in my sleeping bag (thank you Jeff) and we’d brought an extra one that we used as a doona, and we had hand and foot warmers!

 

However, the wind steadily increased and I couldn’t sleep because of the fear that the Aldi tent would self destruct.  The sound of the wind through the snow gums as very, very loud and the tent was being buffeted around, then the wind would die down for a minute or so and another big gust would sweep through.  What was I thinking bringing an Aldi tent, I could have brought the Olympus which is made for these conditions, and why did I only buy 2 snow pegs!  I have to say I’d have preferred being in a tent with someone who knew all about camping at altitude and in the snow, you know, someone to say “don’t worry it’ll be fine”.  Gl looked like she was sleeping but she told me next morning that she thought she was having a heart attack all night, wasn’t worried about the wind but had taken cold medication and it gave her chest pains and made her heart race.  She says that I slept but I’m sure that I was awake until about 2 or 3am. I wanted to be awake when the tent self destructed so that I wasn’t trying to gather all our stuff together to prevent it being blown all over the mountains!

I don’t know how strong the wind was, but at Kosciuszko (which wasn’t that far away, the gusts were 50+k at midnight (“near gale force”), and from the sound of the wind and the amount of buffeting the tent sustained, it felt like “near gale force” to me.

Eventually it was morning, the tent was in once piece and there was no wind, it was a perfect sunny day!  It was luxury, we boiled up some water for a cup of tea and breakfast (Tim Tams for me), and lazed around in the sun until it was time to pack up and leave.

 

We walked down towards Perisher in untracked snow and took time out to try to build a snow man (dismal failure) and did a bit of snow sliding which was great fun.  It was really, really hot and we ended up taking off our jackets and lathering on the sun screen – a far cry from yesterday.

When we got level with the ski runs we watched the people doing ski jumps, absolutely amazing, and before long we were back down at the Skitube and on our way down to Bullocks Flat.

Because it was relatively “early” and everyone was skiing on such a beautiful day, we had the Skitube to ourselves and sat up front looking at this amazing feat of engineering, you could see daylight at the end of the tunnel for ages before we actually broke out of the mountain.

We were soon down the bottom and on our way back to Jindabyne, a lovely lunch and then Gunning for afternoon tea at the Merino Café (lots of raves from David).

So, our first ever snowshoeing adventure was successful and we learned a lot …

1. Snow shoeing is lots of fun and really easy, but hard work for Gl and me carrying big heavy packs, for us, day snow shoeing would be the go with a car camp and all the luxuries.
2. If I’m going to camp in the snow, take the Macpac Olympus (I think I still own half of it although I don’t have custody of it!).
3. If you’re going to camp in the snow, take more notice of the expected wind.
4. Trangias definitely need the lid to be efficient!
5. Hand (and feet) warmers really work, I’ll be buying a heap of them to take away on overnight walks!
6. She-wees, despite being tested at home aren’t infallible but caused great amusement for the rest of us.

Thanks David for organising the weekend!