Sydney to Kosiosko
This morning started with the “Sydney Sprint”. Waking at 6:00am, then walking to the train station at 6:30am, this should have provided ample time to check the schedule, return to the hotel for a shower, and then catch a train south the Melbourne. (Actually, not so…) The train for Melbourne was leaving at 6:58am, with the current time at the ticket window standing at 6:38am. Good thing my Ecco shoes were on and not Asollo hiking boots. “Let the games begin” and I was off.
Three blocks down hill and one block over were strided in almost exactly 3 minutes. Racing past the reception desk to the elevator I took a stabilizing breath to ask if the manager wouldn’t mind starting the “check out process for room 310”. “Not a problem,” was the eager response. Our paths had crossed on the empty morning sidewalk less than ten minutes prior. He was coming to work via the train station, so already had a sense of my urgency.
Zoom, stuff, swish, clothes jammed into the backpack. No time for a shower now. Down stairs, checkout was completed prior to the return elevator door opening. Now the uphill sprint began, in hiking boots and 30+ kg on my back and front. I looked somewhat like a Normandy, D-Day Paratrooper racing to catch the last plane.
Wouldn’t you know it, one block from the train station and with 6 minutes remaining, my boot came untied. Bending over to grab the loose boot string, knee ligaments cracked and strained to balance both front and back packs while holding a full knee bend for a seeming eternity. The pressure from the straps cut off circulation to my hands making the muscle memory movements of “Right over left, bow, rap around, second bow through, and double knot,” an exercise of ten thumbs. Ready, up. Careful, not too fast or I’ll black out. Then big breath and go.
Lucky for me the exact same ticket window was open and the cashier started the ticketing process with my reappearance through the front doors. Walking to the window all that was needed was a couple of swipes of the credit card, it never seems to take on the first try, and the final dash to platform 4 within a minute and a half to spare.
Trotting to the front of the train I jumped through the open door just as the conductors whistle blew and the doors eased shut. Spotting the first open seat I dropped, dripping. The further miracle, given that there are actually assigned seats on Australian trains, was not only was I in the proper car but my landing was only one row and across the aisle from my ticketed seat!
There really isn't a whole lot of anything between Sydney and Canberra, Australia's Capital, except for very dry cattle farms and cool old Victorian train stations. The drought over the last few years has made the terrain pretty desolate with cattle trimming every digestible grass pretty tightly to the ground.
The sprint of the day was far from over and would take a different but still physically engaging form. Once arriving in Canberra, the capital of Australia, I managed to find a car hire relatively quickly and made tracks for Mt. Kosiosko. The first obstacle was navigating the concentric circle maze of surface street around capital hill to find the highway towards the Snowy Mountains. (Anyone who has had the pleasure of driving in Canberra is hopefully nodding in agreement right now.)
An hour and a half of considerably paced driving later and the Snowy Mountains Region, Australians are very literal with their naming structure, lay before me. Stopping at an information center, I came to realize that it was then 2:30pm and the lifts to gain access to the Mt. Kosiosko trail head closed at either 4:00pm or 4:30pm. The docent also informed me that if I drove briskly, the chair lift was an hour and twenty five minutes away. Translation, “Time to channel Mario Andretti and make this Hyundai Gehts fly.” Dodging dead kangaroos (know by locals as was-a-roos) and a poor departed wombat, the lift was in sight with 10 minutes to spare. For those of you playing along at home that’s one hour and twenty minutes of white knuckle, full throttle simultaneous brake and accelerate driving.
As fate would have it, there wasn’t a parking spot to be found. The ski resort town of Ledbo was efficiently designed for shuttle bus traffic.
The lifts were still running, so 4:30pm must truly have been the shut down time. Another packing rush ensued, with laptop, German books, etc. being jettisoned and Nalgene bottle, zone bars, fleece, hiking poles, etc. taking their place. Ready, go. I ran in boots and a single lighter pack and managed to be the last person of the day lifted up to the trailhead.
This translated into 18 km of hiking and the mountain to myself. The information guide at the Snowy Mountains travel center grossly exagerated the snowfields and impending danger of a solo climb, as they were well tracked and only a few hundred meters long. (I have to keep remininding myself, they do call this a mountain you know... haaa.)
The views were inspiring with glacial lakes and moraine deposits adding to a water enriched moonscape scene. Frogs croaked, and it actually sounded like the wooden toy where you rub a stick across the ridges of a hollowed hardwood frog’s back to activate the croaking resonance. Being alone gave the opportunity to “sneak up” on endangered wildlife and spend time with the pygmy possum.
Given that the end of October is the very beginning of “tramping” season there were still granite pebbles available, polished smooth by the weighty abrasion of literally tons of ice and snow.
It was a little hard to believe that in one evening I would summit the highest continental point in Australia and check off the first of hopefully several continental summits to come. (Sorry, not a picture of self confirming mountain conquest, but just a visual confirmation of the first of the seven summits accomplished... haaa.)
The descent gave access to a beautiful display of clouds, shadows, and a purple sunset. What a treat to see the Australian version of “Purple Mountain’s Majesty”.
