High Country, Low Temperatures
Posted Saturday 21st September 2024
Contents
Having done a couple of very pleasant day walks earlier in the year, the time had come to stretch things a bit. Quite a bit as it turned out.
Weather and domestic events meant postponing the next planned day walk, while the onset of colder and shorter days meant we couldn’t be too laggardly in doing our multi-day meander in the high country. So, we skipped the day trip and went straight to a four day modest distance exploration of a corner of the high country we had ignored in the past.
The plan was to park at beyond Falls Ck at Langford Gap, the junction of the Langford West and East aqueducts, follow the latter for around seven km then go off piste (off track) up a side valley to overnight near Fitzgerald’s Hut, to Edmonson’s Hut via the untracked Hollonds Knob on day two, back to Kelly’s Hut on day three, then off piste over Marums Point to the Alps Walking Track and a small repeat portion of aqueduct back to the car on the last day.
Langford East Aqueduct (right) with the West Aqueduct contouring the far hillside.
At least that was the intention, but as with all our multi day outings the plan was rather academic. We tend to re-invent as we go and obviously that attribute has not deserted us in the two year hiatus between overnighters.
Friday
Our day started from St Kilda around 06·00 and we started actually walking at around 12·40 after a reasonably uneventful trip, despite the three single lane road sections past mountain work sites in the last section up from Mt Beauty. One other car was parked at Langford Gap but there were no people at all until evening at our camp site.
The aqueduct is a fairly substantial piece of construction designed to channel run off on the southern side of the high country into Rocky Valley Dam — part of the 1950’s Kiewa Hydro scheme. The water channel is a V trench maybe two metres deep contouring the natural side slope, with a substantial retaining wall / maintenance track created on the outer side that is a rather over done for a walking track. By definition it is near level although in fact it has a slow but discernible climb as you go away from Langford Gap that might amount to around 50 metres in the seven kilometres that we walked.
Right at the start we met Langford Gap Hut, a rather down at heel former SEC hut that evidently sees little love or care.
Langford Gap Hut, a rather run-down old school high country hut with no windows and not much inside.
The meandering of the aqueduct means that the view is one of constant change — exposed with grandstand views off across the mountains at one moment and a short time later almost lost in the bush. In many places it was possible to see the line of the aqueduct contouring a long way ahead, but that was in a straight line and straight was not a notable attribute of the aqueduct.
Along the way there were running creeks flowing into it and at most such places a weir type arrangement has been constructed, providing quite interesting small mountain pondages. It is worth mentioning that the aqueduct has a pole line along its length with poles labelled both for the sequentially numbered Hotham — Bogong walkers and skiers pole line and an SEC identity which is the distance in feet from the Gap.
Approaching the first of the pondages — this one close to where the AWT leaves the aqueduct.
The first notable way point was the junction of the Alps Walking Track (AWT), veering off across a rather twee Ocker covered footbridge at around the two kilometre point. A bit further on we came across a cascade, built as part of the aqueduct and looking something like a fish ladder, which actually dropped the aqueduct (in direction of water flow, not the way we were walking) by around 10 metres.
The AWT covered footbridge — a rudimentary bush structure making use of the available timber.
At around two and a half kilometres beyond the AWT bridge we came across an interesting combination of a weir, a pipe bridge to take the aqueduct over a gulch, and a rather overbuilt junction where a track came in from the east side of Marums Point. The aqueduct from this point on was mostly in buried pipe with short open sections where side gullies joined in.
By now one of us was beginning to run a bit short of stamina — after all a backpack burden of 14 kg over and above the rest of me was somewhat more than I had been used to in recent times.
At around the seven kilometre mark (or more impressively around 22,000 feet according to the SEC way of measuring) we came to a deeply indented section of aqueduct with a weir and a faint track climbing away through the calf high scrub — the point at which we and the aqueduct were to part company.
Ben collecting water from the weir before heading ‘off piste’ up to Fitzgerald’s Hut.
Ben duly filled the water bottles with around six litres (which is also six additional kilograms) before we set off up the scrubby drag to Fitzgerald’s Hut. The scrub, although not high, is typical alpine stuff which is annoyingly hard to walk through — it is springy (it has to be to survive being flattened by snow for four months of winter) so you have to step over it, not through it, thus multiplying the effort required by quite some.
Meet the alpine scrub — Ben trying to follow through where others may have gone before.
An outlying unburnt Snow Gum shows off some of its colourful autumn bark.
In time we arrived at the hut, more or less by the back way, to find two girls and their pack horses in residence nearby, but otherwise we had the place to ourselves. Fitzgerald’s Hut apparently self immolated (with a lot of help from a careless school group) three decades ago but it was quickly rebuilt in a rather unique way – it is now effectively a slab arrangement with the walls comprised of good second hand railway sleepers stacked between vertical sleepers edge on. Far more robust than most mountain huts, with walls that should be quite impregnable to anything short of war.
Fitzgerald’s Hut — not much doubt about those slab walls, even though the ‘rail jewellery’ has long gone.
We fairly rapidly set up our tents, made dinner using a nearby rock outcrop as a kitchen and dining room, and took a few sunset shots before retiring to bed.
End of the day, with the temperatures rapidly dropping toward freezing.
Although it had been a delightful sunny, mostly windless day, as soon as the sun dropped so did the temperature — in fact it plummeted so rapidly that less than two hours after sunset the tents were frozen solid. So, I might add, was Mr Smarty-pants who brought his lightweight sleeping bag and new ‘reactor’ liner (to save weight) which even with all available clothing were barely adequate. I now know a lot more about the process of shivering as a warming strategy!
Saturday
Next morning I remained as I was until the sun had started to defrost the tent.
Greetings from a very frosty morning — a consequence of a very cold night.
A bit later and considerably warmer it was ‘selfie’ time, making good use of our camp chairs.
We had breakfast then took our time to pack the tents and gear away (partly to allow the tents to thaw out and dry off) before trudging off at round 09·45.
Walking out from the Hut toward the ridge top and a sharp left turn.
The track out headed off up the short distance to the ridgetop where we turned sharp left (an east to north-west type turn) to follow a more or less level track through lightly treed uplands toward the distant saddle between Marums Point and Hollonds Knob.
The track veered to the left, but we had other ideas — Hollonds Knob is straight ahead so there we will go.
It was another delightful walking day with sun, periodic flutters of breeze and hardly a cloud in the sky — in fact all four days were much the same.
Our way of doing things in the high country is not to follow tracks but to go off piste wherever there are reasonable opportunities to do so, which in this case meant a diversion to go over the top of Hollonds Knob instead of around it.
The climb up its southern slopes involved much more of the alpine scrubby stuff which at one point was obviously home to a cluster of small ground dwelling birds (groundlarks) which flew out in numbers from under our feet.
In time we arrived at the top, an eminence that was actually a large dome with no discernible summit as such. I must say that I found the going rather hard, but that may be because I used up much of my energy shivering during the night.
On top of the Hollonds “Dome” there were expansive views, particularly to the south.
At a convenient cluster of rocks, we stopped for an early lunch which, since we could just about see our destination around three kilometres away (in a straight line), was an entirely sensible choice.
While we were there a very large bunch of walkers (15-20 at a guess) were seen way down below heading toward where we had been last night — which rather justified both our week day start and going trackless when we had.
In good time we set off again down the long gentle slope back to the Big River fire track — which in this area it is part of the Alps Walking Track (Walhalla to Canberra) and the major walking route to two southerly tracks up Mt Bogong (Victoria’s highest mountain) as well providing access to several other high points in the Nelse area. We were not heading for any of these but rather Edmonson’s Hut perched in among a grove of unburnt snow gums in a gully on the south-west face of Mt Nelse.
Perspective can be confusing in the high country — this big tree was hardly 2 metres tall when Ben got close.
After Heathy Spur Jn, with the fire trail ascending Mt Nelse and our less obvious destination left of Ben.
In relatively short order we arrived back on track at Heathy Spur Junction, where we came across a Sydney family heading for Ropers Hut, a place we know well. They were enjoying several days of camping out in the high country. One of the joys of walking is the people you meet (although not numerous) who all have a common interest in walking and are interested in where you have been and what might lie ahead.
For some reason the Parks people have tarted up parts of the fire trail with large amounts of what would pass as railway ballast. If there is anything worse for pedestrians than a badly eroded fire trail it has to be new ballast. As a consequence, there are embryonic new tracks forming up beside the fire trail, making walking far more comfortable, but the surrounding alpine environment just that bit more degraded.
A heavily ballasted section of fire trail with Max making his contribution to a separate walking track.
Around one kilometre along we came to the side track to Johnstons Hut, which we had been advised involved a bit of descending, and consequent re-ascending. Since I was somewhat short of stamina, I took the prudent approach and stopped at the junction while Ben made the trip to the hut and back. Mind you having a comfortable spot to sit, with expansive views across to the Fainters and up to Nelse was certainly not a hard choice.
During the 40 or so minutes that I was there two separate walkers stopped by and had a bit of a chat, passing on a bits of intel about where we were headed. One interesting point to come out of this was that the Feral Walker, a serial pedestrian YouTuber, was at Johnston’s Hut only a day before on his way from Canberra to Walhalla (check out Goin’ Feral on YouTube for his visual series on that walk).
When Ben returned, we set off a further 300 metres or so up the main track to the turnoff to Edmonson’s from where it was only around one Parks kilometre to our destination for the day.
We arrived somewhat before 15·00 into a bit of an alpine oasis — an enclave of trees and grassed areas along with a hut and a very modern bush toilet. At least this time we were early enough to sort out tents and our evening meal before sundown. From the start of our ascent of Hollonds until we arrived at Edmonsons we had hardly met a tree that provided any shade, highlighting what above the tree line means.
Edmonson’s Hut looks rather charming in its patch of ancient (and unburnt) snow gums.
Edmonson’s is a fairly ordinary bush hut, although with the modern convenience of windows, but despite its outward appearance, inside it was heavily impregnated with the smell of old smoke and stale ash. It is surrounded by a multiplicity of well tended camp sites in among the delightful grove of mature (and unburnt) snow gums. The only problem was that most sites were on a slope. We did find a suitable place right at the lower end where we could comfortably fit both our tents — one value of free standing tents is you can erect them then shuffle them round until they are in the best position.
One outstanding feature was the water supply. Despite being only 100 metres or so lower than the nearby summits of the Nelse group there was a perennial creek with a very good and reliable water flow.
Sunday
The night was cold but the trees gave some protection from frost so that it was a more comfortable night this time. Even so there were frost patches in the morning.
Frost fringes on the foliage — maybe not quite as cold as the previous night but…
We had made an executive decision to change our plans for the day, based on what we could see of Marums Point from the top of Hollands.
Approaching Marums — we went off track at the bend in the track and headed straight up to the left horizon.
We decided to actually camp up near the summit of Marums, which at 1819 metres was the highest point we would reach on this outing. This only involved a fairly short walk, so we were not in any hurry to get up and go. One advantage was that we avoided quite a bit of duplication (back tracking) of where we had already been.
The first part, back to Heathy Spur Junction, was the only re-run of yesterday, but without meeting any people along the way. From there we continued a short distance along the fire trail until it crossed Watchbed Ck, where we picked up water, before veering off track and heading in a straight line toward the ridge top.
By now we had become a bit more selective in our route finding, following grassy leads between the alpine scrub as far as reasonably possible. This added a bit of distance but made the whole event rather easier.
The ascent may not look to be much, but the tussocky and scrubby terrain made it feel rather otherwise.
The ridge top, although around half a kilometre from the summit, had grand views including to Rocky Valley Dam pondage and all the highest peaks in Victoria bar one (Cobberas 1, which is up near the NSW border well to the east). It also had scattered tree cover which included snow gums with their colourful autumn bark showing to advantage.
The summit area of Marum Point is like Hollands in that it is a huge dome, but we did find a minor rocky eminence that possibly qualifies at the highest point. What was of greater interest was finding a large flat area nearby that was the size of several playing fields and had nothing more difficult to camp on than snow grass and alpine daisy plants. A superb site.
Marums was another “dome” but we think this might qualify as the high point by a small margin.
It was a beautiful ‘bluebird’ day — sun shining but air temperature modest, a few puffy clouds, a slight breeze to riffle the trees and grasses, no sounds other than those of nature and a fair bit of attention from inquisitive flame robins and the occasional rosellas, making for a delightful afternoon. Having our little fold out armchairs (an ambitious description) allowed us to follow the best location as the sun moved across the sky.
Well before the sun had descended to near the horizon we had dinner and then waited around until the now golden orb, looking almost Asian through the airborne layers of smoke haze, sank slowly behind the distant Fainters.
Waiting for sunset — a slow process whereby the temperature sank faster than the sun.
The night may have been a little less cold and not as frosty, but it turned out to be another relatively sleepless night trying to stay warm.
Midnight in the high country — moonset and an illuminated tent at the Marums camp.
Monday
Next morning, by some mischance, we found we had positioned the tents in the shadow of the only trees in close proximity, although it was fairly simple to move a few metres either way to get into the sun and, since we wanted to get away relatively early, we made do with that.
Break of dawn highlights some of the extraordinary wind and snow tolerant trees.
Breakfast was done in fairly short order, after which we packed such that we departed before 09·00 — early for us in the context of this outing. The first matter was to identify where the ridge off Marum was — the summit area was so large and featureless that our route was not initially obvious. Judicious use of the map and a bit of dead reckoning had us in the right place and on our downward trek in next to no time.
These lovely little Flame Robins are common in the high country and are rather sociable little beings.
The Alps Walking Track heading down toward the aqueduct — if in doubt follow the snow poles.
From our camp we back-tracked on our upward route (approximately — there was no actual track of any sort) for a bit which brought us to a decision point — keep to the ridge top or try for the least obstructed route but risk dropping down one side and possibly losing direction? We mostly stuck to the former, noting that the ridge top and trees generally made for a reasonably clear right of way. Along the way one of our little Flame Robin mates tracked us for a while this morning.
Things went so well that we arrived at the Alps Walking Track (AWT) running across the ridge in just over half an hour. While we were lounging there a backpacking couple went past — the only other people we saw on the track that day.
We had walked this section of the AWT in the opposite direction 30 years ago and both remember it as a modest ascent of no great consequence. This time, in the downhill direction, it seemed endless and in fact took us almost an hour to get down to the aqueduct. To give the AWT credit it did go through a wide range of environments ranging from open snow grass meadows to boggy hollows and damp (and frosty) forests.
At one point I poked my walking pole into the adjacent scrub to help get past some obstruction, except the pole didn’t find solid ground and I gracefully toppled sideways into the alpine scrub. I can now unequivocally advise that a lot of the scrub is alpine mint!
For some reason the covered footbridge looked far more inviting that it did three days earlier.
Eventually, and rather unexpectedly, we came out at the covered footbridge over the aqueduct, which was cause enough for a bit of a break — a morning tea stop with nothing but cold water. Basically, from our camp site to the bridge was all downhill which may have something to do with the shiny purple big toes that I acquired (although they are now dull black).
According to the nearby pole marker we had but 7000 feet to go, not the most encouraging sort of number but it rolled back quickly enough once we were again on the move.
The far snow pole has the somewhat dispiriting advice that we are just 6800 feet from the end.
By now the day had warmed up to some degree (maybe just into double digits) and the breeze was partially deflected by the terrain so it did become a bit of a trudge of the same old, same old kind.
Never the less just on an hour after leaving the covered bridge we were back at the car and a quarter of an hour after that we were on the road heading down toward Mt Beauty and lunch.
