Aussie Bloggers

2228m above sea level. Mt Kosciuszko. As high as it gets in Australia.

My husband, 2 kids (10 yrs and 8yrs) and I decided to climb Mt Kosciuszko during our summer holiday. This is something that we had talked about doing for a while but had always been something that we would do “one day”. We don’t normally do a lot of walking but thought that it would be a great experience for us and especially for the kids.

There are two ways to get to the top of the mountain – one is via a track from Charlottes Pass which is 9km each way and the other is from Thredbo and is 6.5km each way. I was amazed at the number of people using the track from Charlottes Pass on mountain bikes. Both tracks meet at Rawson Pass and then there is one track to the top of the mountain.

New Years Day dawned on Thredbo and it was hot – 30° c. Which is unseasonally hot, normally its low 20’s at that time of the year, but there was hot westerlies blowing.

The four of us took off from the hotel to Thredbo at around 8.30am. We psyched ourselves up for what lay ahead of us. The walk is 6.5km each way. I don’t think we truly had any understanding of just how far that was until we had done the walk.

We caught the Kosciuszko Express Chairlift from Thredbo which took us to an altitude of 1930m. Once you reach this height there are no trees as it is too cold for them to survive. The only vegetation is small ground cover. Some of them are flowering and it was beautiful to see them, but almost eerie with no trees around.

Alpine Wildflowers near Merritts Creek (Click on thumbnail for a larger image)

Once you leave the chairlift the first part of the track is paved and quite easy to walk on. After crossing Merritts Creek then the track is a raised metal walkway. The steel is rusty as galvanised steel could not be used as it is toxic to many of the plants growing here. Walking on the path is very easy and because it is raised off the ground it is almost springy.

The path follows the hills and there are some quite steep sections and in one part, several stairs. Once we reached Kosciuszko Lookout we were about a third of the way there. The view from the lookout is amazing, of both the mountain itself and the surrounding area. The disheartening part was seeing the path meander off into the distance with no apparent end.

View of Mt Kosciuszko from Kosciuszko Lookout. The dark curvy line is the walking track.(Click on thumbnail for a larger image)

After a couple of hours of walking, we reached Rawson Pass which since the completion of a permanent toilet block, now has the highest toilets in Australia. Thank goodness we didn’t have to use a portable toilet.

Once you leave Rawson Pass the last part of the walk is 1.5km, which spirals around the mountain until you get to the top. This was also the hardest part of the walk as the path was loose gravel and much harder to walk on. Finally though you come around a bend in the path and there it is – the Top!!!!

Every bit of the walk was well worth it. The view from the top is amazing. And the sense of achievement made it all worthwhile. There was more than a few times during the walk that I wondered whether I was actually going to make it, due to being unfit and have the worst sinus infection of my life. Both kids were absolute troopers. They both made it, with a little bit of encouragement, but not as much as I thought that they would need.

The return trip seemed to be much quicker than the walk up. A lot of it is downhill on the way back, but don’t be fooled – there are still some uphill sections. The guidebooks suggest about 4-6 hours to complete the walk and we took 5, including a fair bit of time at the top of the mountain.

If you do the walk, be sure to take lots of water with you, insect repellant (I have never seen so many flies before) and smother yourself in suncream. And keep smothering yourself. Everything they tell you about the effect of the altitude is true – its much harder to breathe and you burn very quickly. And more water than you think you will need – about as much as you think you can carry.

I highly recommend this walk to anyone that hasn’t done it. Go on, get out there and explore our great country.