How you can cram a 5 day Main Range Walk into 3 days

MT KOSCIUSZKO NATIONAL PARK – DECEMBER 2001
Thredbo > Mueller’s Pass > Mt Townsend > The Sentinel > Watsons Crags > Blue Lake > Charlottes Pass > Mt Kosciuszko > Thredbo
Right from the beginning, we should have known that this would be No Ordinary Trip.

Doug S had planned this adventure and six of us thought it sounded like the perfect way to spend five days, a walk in the Park so to speak!

DAY 1:  With a departure of 4.30am from Kariong, it would have been a surprise if someone hadn’t slept in (no names mentioned here)!  Then arriving at Marulan, we discovered that there was only one waitress available on the breakfast shift and heaps of customers, so leaving Marulan we were way later than planned.

The rest of the trip to Jindabyne and Thredbo was uneventful.  We left Thredbo on the chairlift for Crackenback at around 1pm, it was a little windy and cool on the chairlift but nothing compared to when we got up the top and started walking – very strong winds and really cold, my nose was frozen and running just getting off the charilift.

We walked up the tourist track and our next scheduled stop was to drop the packs at Rawson’s Pass and head for the summit of Kosci, but on reaching Rawson’s Pass we discovered that the top of the mountain was shrouded in thick clouds, we wouldn’t have been able to see a thing, so decided to postpone this visit until either the next morning or on our way back to Thredbo five days later.

We continued on to have a quick look at Seaman’s Hut (we’d all seen it before and were just checking to make sure it was still there – lol) and then made our way down into the valley directly below the Hut to a camp site below Mueller’s Pass.  The camp site was very nice beside a creek swollen with run off from the melting snow, however the wind steadily picked up during the night and there was little shelter in the valley.

DAY 2:  The wind was stronger than the day before and the cloud was very low, but we were hopeful as the weather forecasts had suggested it would clear overnight.  We climbed to the top of Mueller’s Pass, skirting great expanses of melting snow/ice and sought shelter out of the wind.  The plan was to climb Mt Townsend but with the poor visibility and the strong winds this plan was discarded and we decided to continue on the track to Kunama Ruin.

By mid-morning the winds had reached gale force strength, it was too windy to even stop and admire the view of Lake Albina so we trudged onwards bypassing the turnoff for Kunama Ruin.  The winds were so strong that I was almost knocked over at one point.

The rest of the day was spent Reassessing The Situation.  At each of the planned side trips to the Sentinel, Mt Twynam and Watson’s Crags we Reassessed The Situation and decided to forgo the side trips it was just too windy.  If we had visited any of these highlights we would have been either blown off the edge or wouldn’t have been able to see a thing with the low cloud.

By now we were on the lookout for a sheltered spot to camp, but found nothing that would provide any shelter from the winds.  By lunchtime we found ourselves at Blue Lake (on the tourist track to Charlotte’s Pass) and we took time out to go down to the lookout at Blue Lake and then Reassessed The Situation.

It was decided to continue our quest for a sheltered camp site even if it took us all the way to Charlotte’s Pass.  At about 1.30pm we lunched on the side of the track just above the Snowy River – it was surprising the number of day trippers that passed us totally unprepared for what lay ahead of them – just a backpack, no gloves, and in some cases no protective clothing!

After lunch we continued up to Charlotte’s Pass to Reassess The Situation.  I really thought we’d find some shelter in amongst the snow gums at Charlotte’s Pass, but when we got there, there wasn’t any where that you could put up a tent, so, it was decided that our best bet was to continue on to Seaman’s Hut for the night – hadn’t we left the valley below Seaman’s Hut just this morning?  I wasn’t at all happy about having to walk to Seaman’s but the guys made it sound as though it was “just around the corner”.  7k later and with snow falling (well, not really snow but flurries), we reached Seaman’s Hut, we’d just completed a 20k round trip battling 40 – 50k headwinds all the way.  I was so thankful to reach the hut and be able to spend the night out of the wind (and I’m a fan of wind) I didn’t care that we had to camp on the floor of the hut!

DAY 3:  Spending the night in the hut was a good choice because during the night there was a really heavy frost (I actually thought it had snowed again), in some areas it looked as though there had been freezing rain and early in the morning there was a fall of “sago” (a cross between snow and hail, about the size of sago) and then a dusting of snow.  It was also much colder than the day before and there was a heavy fog so we Reassessed The Situation again and decided that the weather wasn’t going to get any better during the day and our best option was to walk down to Thredbo.  Lou suggested we put on all the clothing that we could as the temperature was now below zero.  We looked as though we were geared up for a trip to the Antarctic and just as we were about to depart along came another couple of European day trippers – no gloves, hats or coats, just lightweight wind-breakers – they must have thought we were a bit over the top.

We reached Rawson’s Pass and once again decided that the weather did not warrant a climb to the top of Kosci so headed on our way to Thredbo.  Much clothing was discarded along the way as we lost elevation and the temperature rose.

At Cootapatamba lookout we Reassessed the Situation again and decided against going down the Ramsheads to Dead Horse Gap and continued on to Thredbo.

At Crackenback we sent Lou down in the chairlift as his knees were a little dodgy by this time (who wouldn’t have sore knees after a 20k day), the rest of us followed the Nature track down.  We got to Thredbo village and the sun was shining and sheltered from the wind it was difficult to believe that the weather was as bad as it was up at Kosci.

We thought about doing something else, after all we had planned on five days, not three but in the end we all decided that we’d had enough, Lou’s knees were shot, Peter’s freshly healed broken wrist was swollen from over-use and Viv was fantasising about warm days on the beach, so we headed home arriving back on the Coast at 9pm, talk about a whirlwind trip!