climate change: kosciuszko xmas

On day seven of our nine day journey through Kosciuszko National Park, we left our base camp at Tarn Bluff, followed the watershed of the Geehi river north and contoured around a large hill peppered with granite tors. Several kilometres to the northwest, the rugged southeasterly peak of Jagungal loomed. Having climbed Jagungal thirteen years earlier, I readily anticipated reaching its summit once again. Even so, environmental change is an essential characteristic of mountain life. Wind and rain, snow, ice, fire and drought; Kosciuszko's ecology is constantly evolving. But unique mountains such as Jagungal become permanent landmarks in a bushwalker's imagination. So as we approached Jagungal via the Geehi watershed, memories of the exhiliration I had experienced upon attaining its summit thirteen years earlier were only tempered by the prospect of climbing Jagungal once again. Once upon the summit, while looking south toward the Main Range and Mt Kosciuszko, our party would then be able to clearly see where our trip had begun seven days earlier. This capacity to reflect upon the origin of a momentous journey is a truly satisfying aspect of bushwalking.

Our leader Jerry was a former rock climber who for his own reasons, believed he had stopped climbing too early in life. He had previewed the Kosciuszko-Jagungal trip in the club program as suitable for those ‘Who like to spend Xmas on the track’. A huge bushfire in the Victorian Alps had obliterated my plans for several trips within the Wonnangatta-Moroka sector of the Alpine National Park. A second alternative proposed by another bushwalking colleague was a five day lilo trip down the Snowy River. But when it comes to spending prolonged periods on water, I can be a wet blanket. So, a two stage trip comprising a four day base camp on the Main Range, followed by a five day pack carry deep into the Jagungal Wilderness, was tantalising enough for me to call Jerry and ask if I could tag along.

On the day before Xmas eve, in thick mist accompanied by intermittent downpours of rain, Lesley and I arrived at the Kosciuszko National Park gatehouse at 5.00 p.m. to discover that the required annual car parking fee had risen by approximately $ 100.00. The attendant’s explanation about financing a second sewerage pipe at one of the privately owned ski-resorts was not convincing. Having no alternative, we paid the fee. Then quickly arrived at Charlottes Pass car park; at which, Jerry and Rod had also arrived ten minutes earlier. After a quick change into our wet weather gear, all four of us were soon attempting to cross the swollen Snowy river, before heading for our intended base camp four kilometres northwest tucked into an unnamed creek valley directly beneath Carruthers Peak. The Weather Bureau had forecast snow for both Xmas eve and Xmas day. Although not explicitly stated, it was clear there were expectations of a possible ‘White Xmas’ prevalent among the group.

The Weather Bureau had made inaccurate forecasts in the past, and this proved to be the case once again. Next morning, Xmas eve, up and out of our tents at 7.00 am, the previous night’s rain had been replaced by a blustery wind from the east. Under a clear sky, yet with a heavy pall of humidity in the air, we quickly prepared our daypacks for a 9.00 am start. Our walk would take in the prominent peaks of the Main Range, and culminate with a climb to Mt Kosciuszko; before contouring around the southeast flank of the robust Mt Clarke and ascending a shallow valley to Club lake.

High above the treeline, we marvelled at the rocky theatre of Mt Townsend, Mt Alice Rawson, and Abbot Peak. Scuttling along the crusty remnants of an old firetrack etched into the western edge of the ridge, we were captivated by the petite blue-green expanse of Lake Albina; before it dropped out of sight into a vortex of ice carved granite and punctuated shadow comprising Lady Northcotes Canyon. The primeval force of an ice-age 10,000 years earlier, and its sculpting of the Main Range, is unique upon the Australian mainland. So unlike the Victorian mountains, within which I had spent my formative bushwalking years. Thirteen years earlier, when my brother and I had traversed the Main Range during our journey along the 750 km Australian Alps Walking Track, the range had remained concealed by low cloud. But now that I was experiencing the remarkable precision of nature on a clear day, it was as if my memory of that first experience was itself in the process of being altered by this glacial landscape. Separating the experience, pushing memories to one side, then carving out a new appreciation of the landscape as it unfolded before me. Kosciuszko National Park is constantly evolving, but so too are our perceptions of what it has to offer, and I soon found myself vowing to one day return to its excruciating beauty as we left the Abbot Range behind and began our ascent toward Kosciuszko’s summit.

We did not spend much time on the summit of Kosciuszko. Apart from acquiring the somewhat smug sense of achievement that accompanies climbing Australia’s highest mountain, the summit is now the domain of daytrippers from the several ski-resorts encircling the Main Range. Leaving 50 odd people to enjoy the view, we left the track and headed across open grassland, skirting northeast around the base of Mt Clarke, then ascending the valley of Club creek to its namesake, Club lake. A pocket of aqua coloured water hidden between Mt Clarke, Mt Lee, and Carruthers Peak, the lake's isolation was in stark contrast to the populated summit of Kosciuszko. As we strolled back to our base camp this was a curt reminder that the Main Range is a curious mix of the civilised and the remote; a somewhat uncomfortable balance of polarised interests maintained by the New South Wales parks and wildlife service. Nevertheless, camped beneath the tranquil shoulders of Twynam and Carruthers peak, it was easy to forget that the Main Range is surrounded by a handful of ski-resorts and is the origin of the monumental Snowy Mountains Hydro electric scheme.

That evening, Lesley put the rest of us to shame by being the one member of our party brave enough to swim in the paralysing water at 2000 metres altitude, directly beneath Carruthers Peak. Cold the water may have been, but it was nothing compared to the unexpected drop in temperature we would experience over the next two days. Seduced by the majesty of the Main Range, combined with the Weather Bureau’s (slightly) inaccurate forecast, I distinctly remember saying to others in the group:

“Something pretty strange will have to occur overnight if we’re going to have a White Xmas”.

Pretty strange indeed... When I woke at 5.00 am on Xmas day to the sound of hailstones pelting the side of my tent, I only became convinced of a White Xmas when at 8.45 am the rattle of hail was replaced by the familiar sound of powder spraying across the surface of my tent. The snow would continue for two days. The temperature would drop to somewhere approaching -10 degrees. My fifteen year old sleeping bag was definitely not the bag it had once been. By Wednesday morning, I would understand in my bones, toes, fingers, head and feet the painful implications of a White Xmas on the Main Range.

After countless cups of tea, and several hours lying on my back studying a speck of fly excrement, Jerry, himself experiencing ‘Cabin fever’, suggested a short walk two kilometres east to Blue lake. Still snowing, it was a revelation watching snow collect in the dark seams comprising the sheer face of Mt Twynam, overlooking the lake; thereby outlining the three glacial moraines that 10.000 years earlier had descended from the Great Dividing Range, scooping out the thirty metres of rock that was now Blue lake. But our visit would be brief. Driving wind and snow, along with ice accumulating on wet weather gear that gave us the appearance of walkers cast in statuesque bronze, soon saw us retreating to the relative comfort of our tents. As snow continued throughout the night, tents froze, and the temperature approached -10 degrees, I woke at 3.00 am feeling like an icicle. Remaining immersed within my tatty sleeping bag, I also shoved my feet and legs into my empty pack, covered the rest of my upper body in a goretex jacket, overpants and groundsheet, donned a heavy woolen balaclava, and after a short period shivering, felt my body temperature rise to an acceptable level. Although still cold, I managed three hours sleep. Upon waking at 6.00 am I was glad to replace my ‘Freezer bag’ with the rest of my clothes and a hot cup of coffee. Peering outside through the fly, there was six centimetres of snow covering the ground surrounding our tents.

*

Wednesday morning, 5 30.a.m., and a red sun rising in the east cast a palpable glow on one side of my tent. (Boxing Day, six centimetres of snow, and a daywalk to Watsons Crags, Little Twynam, and Blue Lake, this time in fine weather, had passed us by as if events occurring in a dream). Stage two of our trip, consisting of a five day pack carry following the Great Dividing Range fifty kilometres north to Mt Jagungal, was about to begin. But before we could start, Jerry, Rod, and Lesley returned to Charlottes Pass and picked up pre-prepared five day food parcels. Four hours later, once Jerry, Rod and Lesley returned with fresh supplies, (during which I had spent the morning cleaning my tent), we were away on the track over Mt Twynam.

Immediately, both the landscape and my appreciation of it transformed. The previous four days spent above the treeline were replaced by a windswept silence punctuated by intimidating formations of ancient rock. A sombre mood settled over the group as we scampered along a barely discernable firetrail. According to our navigator Jerry, the track we were walking along had developed a life of its own. Instead of following the obvious route between two landforms, the track bobbed and weaved around and beyond the exposed faces of Mt Anderson and Anton, somewhat indirectly winding its way toward Mann Bluff. Rock, confusions of it, malformed rocky ledges and outcrops of stone; the stuff loomed all around us, resembling a moonscape that emanated a strange sense of what life might have been like if stranded upon an alien world. Added to this mix of stone and incremental afternoon shadow, sunlight descended through a prism created by a sky emblazoned with monumental cumulonimbus cloud. Past experience had taught the amateur photographer within me that these anvils of gas and myth often forged fading light into luminous evenings. So, as we climbed toward a saddle separating Mann Bluff from Mt Tate East Ridge, I quickly erected my tent then submerged myself in experimental camera technique.

Sublime evening it proved to be as Jerry, Rod, Lesley and I were dumbstruck by that chameleon Mt Tate, as its sculpted peak refracted the sinking sun in a transcendental display of yellow, orange, and red, then purple and crimson; before once again reverting to inanimate rock as the last curve of the sun fell below Robertsons Ridge, hovering above the valley of the infant Geehi river. Does change in the landscape without, initiate change to the landscape within ? Maybe... But if so, then Tate’s performance on that sublime evening should remain Kosciuszko National Park’s best kept secret.

Next morning, Thursday the 28th, and fast approaching the end of one year and the beginning of another, a spiteful easterly wind cornered us on the summit of Mt Tate, then harassed us as we plodded through Alpine grass, (trying to avoid treading on delicate patches of sphagnum moss), while crossing the notorious Rolling Ground. A perplexing undulation of exposed granite oscillating at 2000 metres altitude, The Rolling Ground runs south to north and separates the Geehi and Munyang rivers. Even in fine weather, it can be a difficult beast to navigate, and seems to extract a sadistic pleasure in challenging the ability of walkers who fancy themselves with map and compass. But Jerry had a secret weapon: a G.P.S., which he quickly produced from his pack, before using its grid reference capacity to locate his exact position. The 2003 bushfires had also helped; clearing much waist high scrub and creating a vast procession of skeletal snowgums stretching across the Munyang river valley and beyond, toward the nordically inclined Gungartan. Immediately after lunch, we first descended a shallow creek valley, then picked up a faint firetrail, dropping 300 metres in altitude before ending at Whites River Hut. After a quick glance into the hut’s interior, Jerry suggested the ambitiously named ‘Schlink Hilton’ was a more sophisticated alternative: Rod, Lesley and I agreed. After a three kilometre road bash, we arrived at the Schlink to the possibility of sleeping in an actual bed for the first time in a week. Jerry and I jumped at the chance. But not before I conducted what soon became a strange, ritualistic search for bedbug infestation.

Without an electric microscope, it is impossible to ascertain the presence or otherwise of these blood-sucking parasites. When sleeping in a bush bed, a walker must take a calculated risk and become the subject of his own experiment. As with any scientific venture, precaution remains a top priority. Consequently, I slipped beneath my unzipped sleeping bag wearing woolen Long Johns. (A bushfire precaution to counter the possible ignition and subsequent melting next to my skin of the rest of my synthetic clothing). As the heat beneath my sleeping bag increased I removed the woolen undershirt and lay with my back upon the mattress. (Better to be bitten upon the upper torso first, as opposed to other, let me say, more delicate anatomical protuberances). After some time staring in the dark at the vague outline of a top bunk, I deemed it safe to remove my woolen leggings. This I did rather gingerly, then folded both garments by the light of a 3 phase moon saturating the interior of the Schlink Hilton. While listening to Jerry complain about the poor roomservice, I fell backwards into the first uninterrupted sleep I’d had for seven days. Waking early the next morning, my blood supply was fully intact. Over breakfast, I tried persuading Jerry that the Schlink Hilton deserved a five star rating. But, still muffed by the poor roomservice, Jerry refused to go past three. Eventually, four stars became the acceptable number for recapturing the common ground.

After a week of walking on faint traces of firetrails, open country, and foot tracks, we headed for the strawberry coloured Valentines Hut along a well defined firetrail. But not for long; straight after lunch, we left Valentine firetrail as it undulated west toward Grey Mare Hut, while we sauntered east at 1750 metres altitude across grasslands interspersed by granite outcrops, and into the Jagungal wilderness. Our destination was Bluff Tarn, and once again Jerry was forced to consult his G.P.S. when we became disorientated in country with few distinguishing landmarks. Stumbling around the watershed of Valentine creek, we knew that we were close to our intended campsite. So Jerry and Rod dropped packs and climbed to a shallow saddle on the ridge; before soon returning with the good news that not only had they found our campsite, but the actual tarn beneath the bluff - roughly the size of a large swimming pool - contained enough water within which to immerse a body in bad need of a bath. Inspired by the thought of my first decent wash in seven days, we climbed toward the ridge line. But as we rounded the base of Strawberry Hill, momentarily, their came into out northerly view, Mt Jagungal. At 2061 metres altitude and six or seven kilometres to the north, its south-east summit beckoned, before once again becoming obscured by rock and trees comprising the ascent to our sheltered campsite. I had been on that summit thirteen years ago, and here I was thirteen years later preparing to climb the same mountain once again. What had happened in the thirteen years since I had last reached the summit of Jagungal ? Kosciuszko National Park had been decimated by bushfire in 2003, and feral pigs now inhabited the Jagungal wilderness. Yes, the park itself had changed, but what of myself ? What type of person had I become between 1992 and 2006 ?

Ducking my head beneath the shallow, drought stricken water of Bluff Tarn, the cloudy water rising from my disturbance of its murky bottom obscured any sensibility I had of past experience. So I settled for trying to make my body clean, rinsed seven days of sweat from my shirt and clothes, returned to our campsite, watched the sunset, and prepared for our last day on the track before new years eve.

I woke early, a faint hue of blue light beneath a ridge to the east. I was hoping to photograph a crimson sunrise saturating a particular ancient snowgum discovered the previous night. A thunderclap at 2.30 am, followed by rain and a lightning strike, had sent the natural world undercover. Unzipping my tent inner, then peering out from under the fly at the pre-dawn, I saw in my peripheral vision a large Huntsman attached to the inner wall of my tent. Too close, and too bloody hairy for my liking, I slapped the tent wall with the back of my hand. Of course, the Huntsman fell to the ground and immediately disappeared somewhere beneath the tent floor. I then spent an unnerving thirty minutes preparing coffee and eating breakfast while concerned about the exact location of the big spider.

An excess of cirrus cloud saw my expectation of a crimson sunrise diluted into a cream coloured light, resulting in an uninspired photograph. At 9.00 am we left our tents pitched at Tarn Bluff and began our climb toward Mt Jagungal via the headwater of the Geehi river.

*

A jet airplane flew high overhead; perhaps we were directly beneath the Canberra-Melbourne flightpath. Either way, as we slogged through Alpine grass upon our afternoon return from Jagungal’s summit, the plane’s presence in the sky above snapped me out of an introspective mood.

After thirteen years, reaching the summit again amounted to the perplexing sensation of having expended much energy, for very little reward. Upon our arrival, Jerry, Rod and I had attempted to locate ourselves in the present, by articulating the past. Rod had climbed to the summit seven times, Jerry had been there in the last twelve months, while Lesley, who had never reached the summit at all, had declined the climb and remained in the saddle directly east of the summit, where we’d had lunch. In the thirteen years since first climbing Jagungal, the surrounding landscape was as I remembered it: the same view north to Namadgi National Park, the same view south beyond the Main Range toward the Victorian border. Exhilarated thirteen years earlier, I, like the burnt out, bushfire ravaged landscape before me, at forty six and well into middle age, was feeling the effects of climate change.

Later, on New Years Eve, and after leaving Bluff Tarn, we traipsed along the valley of the Valentine river beneath the threatening presence of a complex electrical storm. Upon our arrival at Schlink Pass, the end of our trip was foreshadowed by a sobering stretch of steel pillion and humming cable that was the powerline leading to Guthega power station. At Whites River Hut, on our last night within an increasingly civilised wilderness, Jerry, Rod, Lesley and I pretended to warm our hands around a non-existent campfire. Laughing and joking, we also felt the weight of expectation that arises from having spent nine days living among the natural world, while the power lines above reminded us of the civilised society from which we had come, and which would soon be our inevitable destination. New Years Day we followed the powerlines to their source.

Upon arriving at the Guthega power station I was struck by the sudden contrast between the chaotic symmetry of the natural world, its windswept ridges, running water and granite peaks, and the dull, familiar angularity of the power station. Constructed with one purpose in mind, that of generating electricity, the signs warning visitors of video surveillance were also a reminder of the volatile state of world affairs at the beginning of the 21st century.

Before climbing into Jerry’s car in preparation for completing our car shuffle to Charlottes Pass, I impulsively snapped a photograph of three huge white hydro-electric pipes disappearing up and over a large hill. Shortly after doing so, I realised the eventual photograph would be meaningless. For it was as if I was once again trying to capture Jagungal’s image, some twenty kilometres to the north. As well as understand the implications of a visit to its summit while wondering what insights Jagungal would contain for myself, and the world in which I lived, when I would once again stand on its summit, revisiting my past with a clear eye and the benefit of high mountain insight. As much as Jagungal remains the same, each visit will always be altogether different. That’s climate change, and a Kosciuszko Xmas.

*

Ice age on the Main Range

Between an estimated 10,000 and 35,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene era, a large percentage of the earth’s surface was covered in ice. Australia, particularly in its southeast corner, also experienced this extended period of glaciation. Periglaciation, a condition during which the surrounding landscape is subjected to freeze-thaw cycles, is said to have occurred across a 40,000 square kilometre area of the Australian Alps. But actual glaciation, where mountains are subjected to many thousands of years of permanent ice cover, only occurred within a 25-50 square kilometre area of Kosciuszcko National Park.

Today, incontrovertible evidence of glaciation can be seen throughout the Main Range. Cirques, moraines, grooved and ice polished pavements, roches moutonnees, boulder erratics and glacial lakes, are all clearly visible. Of the five glacial lakes surrounding Mt Kosciuszko, only Blue Lake is believed to have been gouged by a glacier. Disagreement exists around the formation of Club Lake, although there is some evidence to suggest it may have been glacially carved. Lakes Cootapatamba and Albina are moraine dammed: meaning each was a shallow volume of water blocked and prevented from draining by the debris pushed aside when a glacier carved out a cirque above each lake. (Hedley Tarn is not overshadowed by a cirque; still moraine damned, its formation is the result of a different geological event). Lake Cootapatamba may be the highest lake in Australia, but Blue Lake is unique in that during the last ice age, it gradually became a 30 metre deep bowl of ice: the result of three glaciers descending from different points on The Great Dividing Range. When standing on the southern shore of Blue Lake, the debris pushed aside by the overwhelming force created by these three descending glaciers, can be clearly seen today. This evidence of glacial activity across the Main Range is unique on the Australian mainland.