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| Looking across the Bogong High Plains towards the diminutive Mt Jim. |
After a fairly breezy night listening to my tent flap about I was up pretty early this morning, I emerged from the tent just as the sun made it’s appearance above the horizon. The sun appearing was a pretty good thing too as it was pretty chilly this morning, around 2˚ I’m thinking, although with a clear blue sky above me the day promised to be a good one. Thankfully I pulled up pretty good after yesterdays slog up from the valley, no hot spots, no aching muscles and no sore joints meant that I was a pretty happy walker as I cooked breakfast, warmed by the weak sun.
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'Oh shit, whadya mean were meant to be heading for Hobart?'
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After breakfast I packed up and was on my way by around 8am. I had a bit of a choice along here, the adventurous option would be to approach Mt Jaimathang from Little Plain, the soft option would be to follow Fainter Fire Track to Tawonga Huts and climb it from there, yep, I never said I was hard! The Fainter Fire Track was a very nice walk this morning, the very old fire track crosses numerous small snow grass plains and quite a few creeks as it gently dropped down to Tawonga Huts. Last time I’d walked this track years ago it was a bit difficult to follow where it passed through copses of Snow Gums but on this visit all was very easy when it came to navigation.
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I'm looking relatively chipper...the days still young though!
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That's Mt Jaithmathang across Little Plain.
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Fainter Fire Track heading across Little Plain.
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Fainter Fire Track
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There are quite a few creeks crossing Fainter Fire Track along here.
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| Dropping down to Tawonga Huts along Fainter Fire Track. |
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Just over an hour after leaving camp I crossed Tawonga Huts Creek and entered the open grassy clearing around Tawonga Huts. Instead of exploring the area around the huts though I dropped my pack, grabbed my emergency gear and camera and then set off up the side track to Mt Jaimathang. This track is also a lot more defined than it use to be, there is even a spattering of track markers around to help with navigation, although with a definite pad the track markers are barely needed. The pad climbs up a shallow valley westwards towards the Mt Jaimathang ridge line before swinging north at a small saddle and climbing through the alpine scrub up to the large cairn that crowns the summit.
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I'm about to cross Tawonga Huts Creek and arrive at the huts.
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There's a good pad up to Mt Jaithmathang from Tawonga Huts.
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There's even a few track markers scattered about.
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I was glad that I had a track through this alpine scrub.
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Reaching the ridge line I headed north towards the Mt Jaithmathang summit.
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Mt Jaithmathang
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| Mt Jaithmathang |
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Even for an old, fat and unfit walker like me the climb of Mt Jaimathang wasn’t overly taxing, it’s definitely worth the short side trip from Tawonga Huts if you find yourself up there. Like at Mt Fainter, a little further north along the ridge line, the views from Mt Jaimathang are very extensive. Mt Buffalo seemingly floating above a sea of cloud (smoke?) was probably the pick of the view up here this morning I think. With bugger all wind around and the morning bright and sunny, the summit cairn was a good place to kick back for awhile and have a bit of of a break. Sitting in the sun I could virtually trace out the rest of the days walk in front of me, the Bogong High Plains now being only a short climb away.
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Mt Feathertop from Mt Jaithmathang.
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Looking back up to Mt Fainter.
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Mt Buffalo looked like it was floating on a sea of cloud, although I'm thinking that it was probably bushfire smoke.
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| Tawonga Huts are just visible down in the valley with the Bogong High Plains behind...taken from Mt Jaithmathang. |
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Dropping back to Tawonga Huts I spent a bit of time poking around the old huts, these old huts are a little on the spartan side but provide good shelter in what can be fairly frequent dodgy weather up here. With the mornings excursion out of the way it was time to grab my pack and head off across the Bogong High Plains. Leaving Tawonga Huts I only had to climb up the Fainter Fire Track for a few minutes before I left the protection of the Snow Gums and started to traverse the barren open grassy plains. A few more minutes up the track and it was time to leave Fainter Fire Track and strike out along an old pole line towards the Australian Alps Walking Track.
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Tawonga Huts
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The huts are pretty spartan but they would provide good refuge in bad weather.
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It was only a few minutes after leaving Tawonga Huts when I broke out into open country...
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....and headed right along this old snow pole line.
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| The snow poles are a little dilapidated. |
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This is bleak country along here…and I love it, well I love it in benign conditions like I had today anyway. Topping out just under 1800 metres the walking got even easier now and with Mt Feathertop on the other side of the West Kiewa River Valley looming large there was plenty of reasons to take my time. Until I reached the AAWT the only company that I’d had on the two days of this walk was the little Red Robin that was flittering around me on my climb of Mt Fainter yesterday and a mob of Feral horses across the plains near the track leading down to Westons Hut. Reaching the AAWT and snow pole number 333 though there was suddenly other walkers about, we’re not talking a 'busy as Bourke Street' situation, but I could see other people in the distance.
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There was a mob of feral horses grazing over near the Westons Hut Track.
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As usual it was Mt Feathertop that drew my eye.
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The Bogong High Plains.
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| Picking up the AAWT, I was back in very familiar territory. |
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Joining the AAWT I was back in pretty familiar territory again now. The plan now was to make a mile across the high plains along the AAWT until I arrived in the vicinity of Cope Creek, once there I was going to find somewhere to camp before heading up to Mt Cope on a side trip. Sounds easy enough! As it turned out today was one of those rare days in my Feral life when more or less everything turned out roughly as I’d imagined. My walk across the high plains was largely spent ticking off points of interest, Mt Jim, Mt Bundara, Cope Saddle Hut all came and went surprisingly easily. I suppose it might of had something to do with my pack not having as much weight to it as it had on my AAWT walk last time I came through here, well that and the fact that it was a gorgeous day.
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It was pretty dry and brown up here on this visit although there was still some colour around if I looked.
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It's a shame these horses do so much damage as they are beautiful animals. We're not short of feral horses in Australia though, so we really need to get most of them out of the high country.
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There is a small copse of Snow Gums on the slopes of Mt Bundara that survived the 2003 fires.
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Cope Saddle Hut
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I'm heading there soon.
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The AAWT heading towards Cope Creek.
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| Cope Creek, with Mt Cope in the distance. |
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Arriving at Cope Creek I crossed the bridge and then doubled back to a flat grassy shelf near a river gauging station above the creek. This is the last good camp before reaching Cope Hut and not having a permit for the flash camping platforms at Cope Hut, not to mention not really wanting to spend the night with a lot of other people, this was where I was going to spend the night tonight. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of the day lazing on the grass in the sun beside the creek though, as tempting as that was. No, after getting the tent up and throwing some gear in I grabbed my emergency gear and set off to climb Mt Cope.
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Leaving camp I headed across country for awhile...
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| ....before I picked up this old track. |
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To climb Mt Cope I decided to head cross country until I picked up an old track that took me to the Bogong High Plains Road, follow the road for a few minutes towards Omeo and then climb up a snow pole lined walking track to the summit. It all sounded pretty reasonable and apart from he climbing involved it was all pretty easy. The good news going up here was that the daylight hours were now slipping away and the late afternoon light certainly wasn’t hurting my photos, well unless you count the photos I was trying to take into the low sun…but you can’t have everything.
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I followed the Bogong High Plains Road for a short stretch.
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Climbing into the low sun.
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The light this afternoon on my climb to Mt Cope was very good.
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| It's a fairly easy climb on a defined pad from the Bogong High Plains Road. |
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The climb from my camp down on Cope Creek up to the trig on Mt Cope was only around 150 metres but arriving at the summit I was still keen to stop for awhile. The good news up here is that it looks like the 2003 fires missed a few of the trees on the summit as there are a few mature aged Snow Gums still surviving interspersed with the bleached skeletons of the dead ones. While it’s not super high Mt Cope still allows for grandstand view down Pretty Valley all the way to Pretty Valley Pondage not to mention back down to my camp on Cope Creek.
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Navigation was pretty easy as my tent was in view for much of the walk.
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Mt Cope
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| Mt Cope |
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With the sun getting closer to the western horizon I figured that I’d better make a move back to camp. Instead of retracing my climb I now dropped down an untracked spur to the north west. Higher up this spur required a little concentration to skirt some rocky bluffs and thicker bands of scrub but lower down the walking was as good as it gets, with long open leads of Snow Grass and the occasional Snow Gum to add a little interest. Navigation was pretty straight forward going down here as well, with the low sun just to my left and a bright orange tent set up down in the valley beside Cope Creek, I really couldn’t go wrong this afternoon.
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Looking south east from Mt Cope.
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Dropping down an untracked spur meant negotiating a few rock outcrops and thicker bands of scrub.
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| Lower down things got pretty easy. |
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I arrived back at the tent about an hour before dark so I was able to cook dinner without resorting to using the headlamp. Although the changing light slowed down my cooking a bit as I constantly stopped to take yet another photo. With the sun finally disappearing below the western horizon I was about to jump into the tent when I noticed a glow like a cars headlights to my east. I was staring at the glow when suddenly a bright light appeared over the horizon, it took me a couple of seconds to register that it was the Easter moon lighting up the night, sweet! Still even with the plains now cast in a beautiful light I didn’t stay out of the tent long, the clear sky came with a creeping damp cold tonight, so I was keen to crawl into the sleeping bag.
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Late afternoon on the lower slopes of Mt Cope.
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My tents getting closer.
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| Time for dinner. |
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The Dirt.
I walked 24.7 kilometres and climbed 758 metres on today’s adventures. I suppose I’d call it a hard day but that is really only due to the length of the walk. So far on this walk I’ve covered 44.7 kilometres and climbed 2040 metres over the two days. Navigation is all pretty strait forward today, only the off track stuff on Mt Cope requiring any real concentration, although in good visibility even that is pretty basic. Water and camping is also plentiful today, even at the tail end of a long dry spell there was plenty of water around and camping spots are only really limited by the need for protection from the elements. Mr Chapman and Mr Thomas have both written up this section of the walk (more or less) but both sets of notes are more than a decade old. I used Rooftop’s Bright-Bogong-Hotham Forest Activities map today as well as my GPS maps.
Relevant Posts.
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