Mt Feathertop failure, Alpine National Park

The day started off as planned. Firstly, I woke up, which is always a bonus. Then, Ben managed to fit the world’s largest pasta into his pack without the use of a forklift. I dropped the car off at the bottom of the Bungalow Spur and then we headed to the bus stop which was nearby.

Right on time the mini-bus arrived, which was jam-packed with day trippers off to Mt Hotham for a day of skiing. As I looked inside, it appeared we would need a shoe-horn to get in, but we managed to slowly work our way to the only two seats left at the back.

Most people appeared to be sleeping/dead or insane. I was intrigued to see a bloke, sitting with his shirt undone and pulled off the shoulders, until it bunched around the waist revealing his naked torso. Not the sexiest look I’ve seen and especially as I’d just had breakfast. It didn’t end there though, as we then had to listen to some bloke talk about how his dog had attacked and eaten his pet hamster. Not once but multiple times this story was relayed to his friend. I closed my eyes and had a vision of this bloke being the hamster.

The drive up was short on views due to soaking wet windows from breath condensation, so I was very, very happy to reach the drop off point outside Diamantina Hut. Once escaped from the bus I looked across the Razorback Spur and saw a lot of snow. At the sight, I started to think I should have got more advice about the conditions, other than the hotel receptionist.

I did look pretty silly not bringing the snow shoes, as there was clearly tons of the stuff. Oh well, my thought was we’ll make do with what we’ve got. There were a group of skiers in their 50’s also setting off nearby. When one of them saw we didn’t have snow-shoes he began laughing out loud and generally being a bit of a tool. I didn’t realise at the time, but the made laugher was going to be the other outdoors equivalent of the hiking hero. He was the ‘lecturer’.

Ben set off quickly and found his feet sinking into soft mush up to his knee. He thought by moving quickly he would avoid the sinking-in part of each footstep. The trouble is, as his speed picked up, he eventually was powerless to prevent a solid face-plant. His arms were outstretched and with a sudden trip, he found they weren’t positioned to break the fall. It wasn’t too bad though, as his fall was successfully absorbed by his face. Once I realised he was still alive I made sure I got a decent photo. In fact I took a few until I could hear a mumble in the snow, “Have you got a photo? The snow is freezing my face.”

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The going was now officially tough. It wasn’t remotely cold either, with the temperature being about 6 °C. The snow was soft, wet mush and most steps went almost knee deep. Would snow-shoes have helped? I think they would have made all of the difference, but it may even have been too soft for them. Suddenly up ahead was the laughing lecturer heading back to his car, as he had given up for the day. Too soft for skiing apparently. Instead of a quick yarn he decided to stop and commence a fairly lengthy, bang-on session.

When I told him the temperature was warm and the previous day too tropical for snow, he was quick to implore, “No, No, NO!!” I was now intrigued, as he told me, “No, the problem is there’s an inversion over the mountain and heat rises” I was amazed at this. Heat rising? What? I was always of the opinion that as my feet get hot in shoes, then heat must sink. How did this bloke come up with such an crazy idea? Hang on, why all the ‘No’s’? Isn’t that what I just said?

Next it was a matter of ticking off the boxes. “In Europe where I ski, everyone wears snow-shoes, unlike here.” Okay, he has travelled and he had to tell me. Tick that box. “You hiking here is chopping up the snow for skiing.” Right, apparently he owns the Razorback Spur or instead is rather self-absorbed. Tick that box.

In the end I was enjoying the banter, as it does give me more material for this lame blog. Whereas the ‘hiking hero’ will force feed you how he’s done things longer, better and harder than you ‘the lecturer’ is a different sort of hombre. He likes to inform you you’re doing something wrong and will continue blathering, as if you’re brain dead and missed out on going to school. In fact I had no intention of talking to this bloke at all, but he went out of his way to crap on about rising heat to someone who had an insanely blank look on his face. Eventually, the pain was over and he skied away. I think I said about 10 words in the entire conversation?

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Now in peace, I perused the GPS. Yes, in one hour of walking, we’d covered exactly 800 metres. It was at this point I began to wonder if we should pull the pin, as we were near Bon Accord Spur, which gave us a lazy man option of bailing out and heading straight down the mountain into Harrietville. I was also familiar with the track, as I’d descended the same spur the previous summer.

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We struggled on in the snow until we reached a point where the turn off to Bon Accord Spur is sign posted. For some weird reason this spot was higher than the surrounding area, but there was no snow on it. I must say, it was good to sit down on some grass and ponder the options.

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I thought we could zip down to Harrietville and come back the next day by walking up the Bungalow Spur to Mt Feathertop. I remembered quite clearly from my walk the previous year that Bon Accord Spur, well, sucks. Firstly the sign saying it’s 9 km long back to Harrietville is clearly wrong. I remembered ticking over 9 km last year and being nowhere near Harrietville! It’s downhill all the way, but there’s not much in the way of a view and a lot of loose stuff underfoot, which is a killer on my dodgy knees.

At the top of the grassy spur, we took quite a long break, taking in the sights, whilst tackling a pillow-sized bag of scroggin. Before heading down, we had our last view of our failed objective. Mt Feathertop, covered in snow.

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Now, it was all downhill, as we made our way along Bon Accord Spur. We only dropped about 100 metres in height before the snow vanished. A bit of a pity really, as the snow was a bit of a novelty for both of us. Now it was just a matter of slowly descending with Ben vanishing in the distance..

It was a slow, stumbling descent with a quick stop at the ruins of Bon Accord Hut. It was a time consuming walk and unfortunately it took a lot longer than I expected. At one stage I could hear the Ovens River below and it’s assumed one isn’t far away from it. The trouble is it’s heard early and it seems to take an eternity to reach it! By the time I made it to the Ovens River, I was informed by Ben he’d been waiting an hour. Give me those young knees again, please!

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As it was getting late in the day I decided to break out the Trangia and cook up the world’s largest pasta we’d lugged all day. At one point, I considered staying the night next to the river. We were 5 km from Harrietville and it was quite a peaceful spot. Whilst cooking though, we seemed to be assaulted by a million mosquitoes and man-sized bull ants were walking around, so we didn’t feel inspired to stay. Knowing the car was only 5 km away doesn’t help either.

Even the last hour of walking was time consuming. It seemed the Bon Accord didn’t want to release us, as the final part of the track was interrupted by dozens of fallen trees. It was slow going clambering around and over them and by the time we reached the outskirts of Harrietville, I was glad to call it quits. The distance we’d walked was just over 16 km, but my knees felt like it was a lot more, due to the long descent. Time to head off and officially class this hike as a ‘fiasco’.

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