Clear, cold and windy
Walk: 16.5km
After a carbo fuelled breakfast we set out for Thredbo Village, by vehicle, where
we caught the chair lift to Eagles Nest for the 13km walk to the top of Mt
Kosciuszko. The wind had picked up and was blowing at 40-50km/h and the
temperature on departure from Thredbo was only 16 degC!!! The wind chill factor
made it feel a lot worse. We made it to the top of the chair lift without
incident and immediately donned our jackets and set off. The trail
infrastructure is amazing with steel mesh forming the vast majority of the
trail. This keeps people off the delicate ground all the while allowing access
to the summit. We stopped at the Lookout which was 2km from the start and then
again about 1km from the summit for a pit stop. We ate our mornos on the hoof.
The summit of Mt Kosciuszko is really nothing to write home about (maybe in
winter it looks a whole lot more speccy), and actually looks lower than a few nearby
summits! An optical illusion perhaps? Due to the high wind and the low temps we
did not stay at the top for long, which as a jolly good thing as there were
hundreds of others about to summit - school kids and Japanese tourists in the
main. We were so glad we got to the chair lift early and therefore made the
summit early and were making our way down when the hordes arrived. Most of them
were oblivious to the people descending and were walking four abreast and it
wasn't until they almost smashed into you that they realised their error - eyes
down with headphones in!! We were walking single line and still they managed to
almost smash into us. Eventually Wendy said "KEEP LEFT" and pointed
and they got the message. Why they are not told the "road rules"
before they leave is beyond us. Maybe they are told, but choose to ignore
them?!
We took 1hr:45min to get up to the summit (6.5km) and only 1hr:15min to
descend. It was sometimes harder to go down that it was up, but we all made it
back to Eagles Nest and had a brew before descending on the chair lift. As we
had bought a day pass for the lift, the boys decided to go back up and come
straight back down. The girls stayed below. Just before the boys arrived back
at the Thredbo Station, the lift stopped and they were left swaying in the
breeze. We can only put it down to the old couple we saw at Eagles Nest wanting
to get on the lift and were not quite as nimble as the rest, so they stopped
it.
We wandered around Thredbo for a while and visited the memorial site to the
landslide victims of 1997. No houses have been rebuilt on that section. We then
drove back to Jindabyne, detouring via Lake Crackenback, just to have a sticky.
Some very nice houses there, some built over the lake, which is not that big.
Back home to the van in time for a snooze, shower, and pre-dinner drinks. We
then walked to Clancy's for our Thursday night pub meal. A little more
expensive than Howard, however the meals were twice as big. A slow wander back
to the vans via the lake track settled the dinner nicely.
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