The Route

NOTE - The outline below describes my original plans. The actual journey varied somewhat. Details can be found in the Blog section of this site

Victoria

Crossing the traditional lands of the Gunai-Kurnai, Jaimathang, Taungurung, Mitambuta and Dhudhuroa people

En route to Mount Baw Baw, to start my long ski tour across the alps, I’ll head to Lake Mountain to enjoy its network of groomed XC ski trails. Lake Mountain, like Mount Buffalo later, is well off my planned route, but both are deserving of a visit.

The alpine resort of Mount Baw Baw will give me my first blast on the ski lifts. I’ve fond memories of the hospitality shown to me when I began my journey there in 1997 and am looking forward to a first visit since.

From Baw Baw I head off into wild country. In 1997 I didn’t then see another soul for 17 days until I arrived at a snow clearing depot below Mount Hotham late into the night. Classical music was playing and the road crew were glued to the TV. ‘If you haven’t seen anyone, you wouldn’t know about Princess Diana.’ said one burly bloke, can of VB in hand. ‘That’s her funeral we’re watching.’ I didn’t have a mobile or any communications back then.

The next three weeks will likely be the toughest of the whole traverse. Not only am I trying to get body and mind into the whole expedition, trying to get used to skiing with the heavy pack, but the terrain is rough, in parts overgrown, and with freezing rivers to cross.

Ultimately I will pop out onto Mount Howitt and the Crosscut Saw, some of the most spectacular scenery of the Alps. Spectacular and challenging, with the ridges narrow and steep sided. A place where great care needs to be taken, particularly in icy conditions and poor visibility.

A big added challenge for me this time is when I must leave the Crosscut Saw to make my way west to Mount Stirling and Mount Buller snow resorts. There is no straightforward route for the 25 kilometres each way, and much will depend on snow and weather conditions.

Two weeks or so into my journey, I hope then to have a night and some company at Mount Stirling. Stirling is a place for ski tourers and XC skiers, with no lifts, so I’ll enjoy a blast around some of its trail network. Did I say blast? I might be moving slowly by then, looking forward to a break.

Skiing then across to Mount Buller, I’ll be hosted there for a couple of nights. I can almost taste that first beer now! And the first shower in a fortnight. Perhaps together - a cold beer in a hot shower after big days in the mountains is an undoubted pleasure.

Whilst I’ve mountain biked at Buller, I’ve never enjoyed its ski slopes, so am looking forward to some fine runs and food at the closest major alpine resort to Melbourne.

Depending on how my route was across to Buller, I’ll either be fearful or relaxed about retracing my steps and tracks back onto the Crosscut Saw to continue on my way.

Some of my route will follow the line of the Australian Alps Walking Track (AAWT), a summer trail that extends 660 kilometres from Wallhalla, near Baw Baw, to Tharwa near Canberra.

The delights and the well-remembered horrors of Horrible Gap, Mount Speculation, Mount Despair, The Razor and The Viking will occupy me for the best part of a week before popping into the civilized world of Hotham Alpine Resort, the 5th resort of my journey. It will be good to reacquaint myself with the Hotham lifts, runs and accommodation. As I ski and enjoy their delights, I’ll gaze across to magnificent Mount Bogong, Victoria’s highest, and look forward to being on its summit a few days hence.

Below Hotham sits Dinner Plain, a cosy little village of tasteful architecture, XC ski trails and one ski lift. I’ll celebrate getting through the first half dozen of my skier’s dozen of Australian snow resorts with a ski and a dinner at Dinner Plain.

Leaving Hotham and Dinner Plain behind, I’ll head across the Bogong High Plains for a couple of days to reach Falls Creek and its equally grand skiing. Now, timing is everything but IF the planets align, I MIGHT arrive at Falls (a great name for a resort catering to a sport that can involve such unplanned acrobatics) just in time for the Kangaroo Hoppet, Australia’s largest XC ski race.

Worldloppet is a series of 16 mass participation marathon XC ski races across the world. In 1990, whilst driving around the European Alps for the winter in an ancient, rusting Kombi van, we found ourselves in St Moritz. A few days away was the 42km Engadin Skimarathon, a Worldloppet event. I had just learned the beautiful art of skating on XC skate skis, so entered and found myself lined up with 12,000 other skiers in a chaotic mass start.

It remains my one and only Worldloppet event. This, despite the fact that the following year, Australia’s Kangaroo Hoppet race was accepted into the Worldloppet fold. I have planned to race the Hoppet at Falls Creek ever since but something always got in the way. Could 2022, the 30th running of the Hoppet finally be my chance? Or will delays, weather or whatever stop me again?

From Falls I also hope to make a day trip to Mount Buffalo, the home of Australia’s first ski lift. Whilst the ski lifts in the Cresta Valley now lie dormant, the historic Buffalo Chalet too, XC trails are groomed across the plateau and it would be remiss of me not to plan to glide a few kilometres on them.

Skiing the resort at Falls, racing the Hoppet too, could ensure already tired muscles from the past month are pleading for more of a rest. But the show on the snow must go on.

Mount Bogong is next. Solitary, bulky, a place of steep gullies, Victoria’s highest mountain tops out at 1986 metres. It seems, given its prominence, a little unfair that it wasn’t bestowed with just another 14 metres.

To reach Bogong, I must drop some 800 metres from the High Plains to the Big River. The Big River is actually rather small, but in 1997 the swollen river held me under for too long – far too long - giving me one of my closest calls in near 40 years in the mountains. I’ll be more careful this time.

The long ski descent from Bogong’s summit will drop me low before a climb over Mount Wills to the Omeo Highway. 

Now I could pretend to be on a ski trip for the next 150 kilometres or so, but the reality is most of that distance is well below the usual snowline and skis would likely sit strapped to my pack. So, as in 1997, I’ll change mode of transport and weave a route on the mountain bike for a few days, as August tips into September. A route that will cross the border into NSW to jump across the infant Murray River. Snow then though, through the Cascades and over to Dead Horse Gap, could be challenging on the bike. I will be perhaps two thirds of the way through my Alpine Odyssey.

New South Wales

Crossing the traditional lands of the Ngarigo-Monero, Ngarigu-Currawong, Wongalu and Ngunnawal people.

Now my backyard: the Snowy Mountains, Kosciuszko National Park, The Main Range, home of Australia’s highest mountains and to the state’s four snow resorts.

Thredbo is first which, with the longest runs in the country, will be sure to remind my ski legs. The winter of 2022 will also see Thredbo commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1997 landslide disaster that took away 18 lives, including that of a friend.

After a couple of nights hosted in Thredbo, it will be time to head onto the Main Range and onto Mount Kosciuszko, at 2228 metres, our highest place. Following the infant Snowy River, I’ll cross to little Charlotte Pass village, the only snowbound ski area in Australia, accessible solely by oversnow vehicle or ski. I worked the seasons of 1986 and 1994 there, learning to ski that first season and falling in love with the Snowies too. 36 years later I’ll enjoy those same runs again. That year too I met Wendy, the truest love of my life.

I recognise there is actually a very real danger in this journey of enjoying each of the snow resorts. The longer you spend in the mountains, the more attuned you become to that as your environment, and to the rhythm of your journey. Breaking that rhythm with hospitality, a real bed, hot shower and plentiful food can lull both mind and body into thinking the challenge is over, not just taking a short break. I’ve experienced it in the past, as the body collapses somewhat, none more so than in Charlotte Pass in 1997. Staying two nights with good friends who ran a lodge there, the only real break I had on that journey, I literally fell apart.

In 2022 as I ski ever closer to my seventh decade, I’m sure these resort breaks will be welcome recuperation. But I do wonder how I will react?

It is 9 kilometres from Charlotte Pass to Perisher, my penultimate resort. When I first skied in Australia it was four resorts: Perisher, Smiggins, Blue Cow and Guthega. Now it is one, all combined into the largest snow resort in the southern hemisphere. That said it will be tempting to split the resort again as I ‘sell’ all the resorts for the Our Yarning fundraising. I certainly plan to ski all four areas before I leave. I may even pop home to the Snowies house Wendy and I share but surely that would be too dangerous?

Northward I continue: Mt Twynam, Mt Tate, The Rolling Grounds, The Kerries. To mighty Jagungal, our most northerly 2000 metre peak. There can be no guarantees in such a challenge but, if I’m lucky enough to have got this far, then I’ll know this odyssey is coming toward its end.

Before that finish, there are three more places I must visit. Four days, perhaps five, from Perisher, I will reach Selwyn Snow Resort, my twelth resort. In the cruelest of ironies, Selwyn was due to reopen in 2022 from the destruction wrought upon it by the Black Summer fires. However the heavy early season snows we celebrated at the start of June, the biggest in decades, meant the final construction work could not take place and reopening had to be postponed to 2023. I still plan to celebrate their new beginnings with a ski up and down a few runs, using my own steam to climb.

Then from new to old. After seeing Selwyn’s rebuilt facilities, I’ll head across to lonely Kiandra, once home to the oldest ski club in the world, founded in 1861. Once home to thousands of gold miners eking out a living in the wildest conditions. Now little tangible remains of that history, less so after the 2020 fires destroyed its final remnants.

Australian Capital Territory

Crossing the traditional lands of the Ngarigu-Currawong, Wongalu and Ngunnawal people.

Mid-September and spring is in the air. The snow cover will likely be thin at these relatively lower altitudes. Kiandra could be a fitting place to finish my ski journey, as it was back in 1997. But, if time and conditions allow, I’ll continue north and climb again, hopefully back into deeper snow, to cross into the Australian Capital Territory and ascend Mount Bimberi, at 1913 metres, its highest peak. Perhaps a last few turns off its summit. Then I’m done, my Odyssey complete