Easter holds the promise of granite landscapes and white sandy beaches. Short walking days, languid afternoons swimming in crystal clear, turquoise water. But, like every plan made in the last 12 months, this one goes awry. This time, it’s flood damage, not the pandemic, that closes Wilsons Promontory’s walking tracks and has us scrambling for an alternative. Our walking companions, Marc & Miranda, suggest a walk in the high country. So, why not as high as possible and climb Mt Bogong, Victoria’s tallest mountain.
The deciduous trees of the Kiewa Valley glow russet red and bronze. The smoke of the burning-off season plumes in the sky. The prospect is hazy. Mountains and farmland become impressionist paintings and even ramshackle sheds take on an aura of beauty. When the sun sets, it’s as if it is on fire. In the morning, fog lies low in the valley and a golden light washes over the mountains.
It’s a 1,500-metre climb to the summit of Mt Bogong over a distance of six to eight kilometres, depending on the route. The ascent via Eskdale Spur is longer but has a gentler gradient than Staircase Spur. We choose the former and with three days to wander, have no set destination today. This proves fortuitous when an hour into the walk, we realise that we haven’t checked our bearings and are off our intended course. We recalibrate and take heart because, even though it will be a longer day’s walk than anticipated, we don’t have to retrace our steps.
Once out of the lush, fern-green gully, we climb up through straight-trunked woollybutt and fragrant peppermint gums. The leaf-strewn track becomes steep, rocky and exposed. We look out upon ridgelines etched in silver, the strange beauty of a landscape still recovering from the savage alpine fires of 2003.
After twelve strenuous kilometres, we come to Michell Hut and call it a day. We set up camp among the snow gums. There is water and we can shelter in the hut as we enjoy our one bottle of wine with an early dinner.
The next morning, the sky uncertain, we pack up camp and set out for the summit of Mt Bogong. Up through the twisted snow gums and out onto alpine meadows, gold and white with the last paper daisies of the season. The sky clears as we near the cairn that marks the domed-shaped summit. A vista reveals itself. Range upon range of smokey blue mountains, steep slopes disappearing into distant valleys, the play of light on ancient rock. Three boys come racing up to the summit carrying a football. They kick a goal from the highest point in Victoria and the youngest of them squeals with delight: the air is so thin up here it makes me giddy.
After taking in the magnificent 360-degree views, we follow the snow pole line to Cleve Cole Hut, four kilometres to the south. This stone hut is one of several memorials to lives lost to blizzards and avalanches in this high, wild country.
Again, we set up camp among the snow gums, these ones old and gnarled and beautiful, their trunks striped bright with colour. These emblematic trees have survived the ravages of ice, snow and wind but are slowly falling prey to climate change, as dryer conditions enable insects to overwhelm the tree’s defences. As the only trees to live up this high, their demise will be catastrophic for biodiversity in the Alps. It’s heartbreaking to contemplate a future alpine landscape bereft of such beauty.
After a late lunch, we find a path through the tussock grassland and follow Camp Creek to a series of waterfalls, the last and most impressive being Howman Falls. Deep rock pools, cascading water and an uplift of rock that makes looking down to the swift-flowing creek, vertigo-inducing.
We wake to rain during the night. At first light, we scurry to pack up the tent and retreat to the hut for breakfast. Then, it’s back across Hells Gap towards Mt Bogong; mist swirling, wind howling. We’re grateful for the line of the snow poles as we cross the exposed plateau, aware of how our fortunes could change if the weather worsens. There’s an occasional steel pole tuned to sing in the alpine winds, a haunting guide when all is white and visibility zero.
Just before the summit, we turn right on to Staircase Spur, winding around rocky knolls that appear and disappear in the fog. Then it’s all sharply downhill. Dark rocks sparkling with mica, white quartz tinged with the false promise of gold. At Bivouac Hut, we rest for a time before tackling the switchbacks and steep, loose-terrain that will take us back to Mountain Creek. Down through cinnamon-scented forests and heathlands bright with pink flowering trigger plants and orange-breasted flame robins. Then a flat two-kilometre walk to the trailhead.
We walked 35 kilometres in the course of our three-day ramble. Given the physicality of the ascent and descent, we delighted in having time to linger up high, taking in the sweeping views and nestling in the snow gums each evening, catching up on a long year of doing without each other’s company.
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If you enjoyed our walk to Mt Bogong, you might also like to read about Central Australia’s Larapinta Trail, Iceland: A Land of Ice and Fire or walking the Lycian Way in Turkey.
