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| On the summit, day 3. |
It's been awhile since I've posted anything with snow in it and being Autumn the options for a snow walk around Melbourne at this time of the years are a little limited, so I figured that I'd raid the Feral Family photo album and do a quick write up about a walk I did with my mate Dave way back in the day. The original plan for this walk was to head up to Cleve Cole Hut and spend a couple of nights up there generally taking it easy and kicking back. Conditions conspired to thwart the initial plan somewhat but we still had an enjoyable three days up in the mountains.
Day 1 Mountain Creek to Staircase Spur 7.6 kilometres
How's that sub heading, vague enough for you? Well the original plan was to make it all the way over the top to Cleve Cole Hut but by the time we'd climbed above the tree line on Staircase Spur it was obvious that we wouldn't be walking there today. Our climb up Staircase was the usual grunt but we were actually doing pretty well, but breaking out of the trees we were hit with a promised cold front, to continue on wouldn't be in our best interests this afternoon. So....instead of backtracking back down the mountain to the dubious comforts of Bivouac Hut we decided to camp just inside the tree line. Scraping out a flat spot in the snow, sheltered by a few snow gums we settled in for a long night, thankfully our old tent held together and we actually managed a pretty good nights sleep.
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By the time we'd climbed above the tree line on Staircase things were starting to look a little grim....
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......so we dropped back into the tree line and set up camp for the night.
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Day 2 Staircase Spur to Cleve Cole Hut 8 kilometres 15.6 kilometres total
Happy to have survived our night out high up Staircase Spur in relative comfort, it was two fairly chipper walkers who broke camp and set off for Cleve Cole today. The chipper mood didn't last long as we waded our way through the fresh snow climbing very steeply to the top of Staircase Spur. Now even though the weather was a lot better than yesterday it still wasn't really condusive to taking in the view from the summit, so we decided to by pass the summit cairn today and head across to the relative safety of Cleve Cole Hut.
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Things were still a little grim up on top today.
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I've mentioned before on my blog about his next section of track, it has to be one of the most exposed walks in Victoria I would think and to be honest it was pretty ordinary today. The good news was that the wind had blown most of the deep fresh snow off the ridge so we weren't trudging through waist deep powder, but that same wind made it fairly hard just to keep our feet. With the promise of a warm, dry hut in front of us we just kept plodding along, keeping a close eye on the ice encrusted snow poles as they materialized out of the gloom. Just after lunch we arrived at the deserted Cleve Cole Hut. After having a warming drink we made ourselves comfortable, our afternoon was spent eating, drinking, snoozing along with the occasional foray outside when the weather let up a bit. Life was pretty good really!
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Cleve Cole hut was (and still is) a welcome refuge in a storm.
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| Collecting water from the creek near the hut. |
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Day 3 Cleve Cole Hut to Mountain Creek 15 kilometres 30.6 kilometres total
After a comfortable sleep at the hut we were once again a couple of chipper walkers who were packed up and on our way fairly early today. We had good reason to be chipper today though, where as yesterday we slogged across the top of the Mt Bogong plateau in pretty inhospitable conditions, today we only had blue sky above us for the most part. Our walk back around to the summit cairn was one of those strolls that would be seared in our memories for good.
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Today's walk was a ripper.
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Gaining the summit we gazed out at the sea of white that we couldn't see yesterday, Mount Bogong seemingly floating in an ocean of cloud today. All good things come to an end eventually though and with some reluctance we retraced our steps through the snow back to the top of Eskdale Spur and started our long descent. The good news today was that the soft snow on Eskdale Spur actually cushioned our knees and ankles a bit on the long descent down the mountain, the snow lasting until we arrived at Camp Creek Gap. Once the snow petered out we basically just had the nice firetrack walk down to Mountain Creek car park and our walk was over. Hmmm makes me want to head up there again.
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| Looking across the deep valley of Big River to the Bogong High Plains. |
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I think this is looking from the summit back towards the top of Eskdale Spur.
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A slightly younger Feral Walker.
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| Dropping down Eskdale Spur we started to meet up with a few other people. |
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The Dirt.
I've pulled these distances out of old books and maps so they may be slightly out, I haven't got a metres climbed figure but I'm guessing it would be around 1900 metres over the 3 days, this is a fairly hard walk, especially in the snow in the middle of winter. Now I haven't been up Mt Bogong for a long time in winter but I'm suspecting things are a little more crowded up there now days, I wouldn't be thinking that you'd get Cleve Cole Hut to yourself now, we didn't come across any other people until we started to descend Eskdale Spur on the third day.
Relevant Posts.
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| There were a few people camped at Michell Hut, this is what it looked like before all the snow gums were toasted in the bushfire. |
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| The old Michell Hut was a pretty rustic affair, it was surprisingly comfortable inside though, featuring a nice pot belly stove and a sleeping platform. The old hut burnt down in the same fire that claimed the snow gums. The huts been rebuilt now in same generic design that the parks people are using for all the rebuilt high country huts. |
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| Having a bit of a break on Eskdale Spur where the headwaters of Mountain Creek cross the track. |
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