Last year I was part of an expedition across the Australian Alps. It was the longest expedition I have been apart of. I have now finally finished writing up this blog from my daily journalling during the expedition and edited the photos. While there were plenty of great things about the expedition it also had it's negatives. Over the three parts of the blog I hope to share these stories. Unfortunately I can't include everything that happened so have tried to include all the main things that happened. This first part includes Pre-Expedition and Section 1, Part 2 covers Sections 2 and 3 and Part 3 will cover Section 4 and Post-Expedition.
Pre-Expedition
The original plan of the expedition was to start at the Mt Franklin Chalet ruins in Namadgi National Park and summit the 2 highest peaks in the ACT. Then summit the 26 named and unnamed peaks in Kosciuszko National Park followed by the top 10 highest peaks in Victoria before finishing at Mt Baw Baw. The aim of the expedition was to raise awareness of how the changing climate was affecting the alpine environment and what people could do to help. The expedition was also going to be the first all-female team snow shoe traverse of the Australian Alps.
I first heard about the expedition while doing an alpine guide course. After the course I decided that I’d like to join and asked more about it. I then met with the person (I’ll refer to the person as T. I’ve read that since the expedition they’ve come out as non-binary) who was leading the expedition. Later Tessa, a doctor, joined and I asked if it would be ok if my younger sister Angela could join for part of expedition even though she hadn’t camped on the snow before or snowshoed but had done plenty of bushwalking.
Next came all the planning and preparation. We had several chats and a few lists and tables with gear and other things that we’d need. Thankfully we were able to get a few sponsors for some of our gear including Wilderness Equipment who was our main sponsor, Wilderness Sports for snowshoes and Terra Rosa Gear for the bothy. T wanted the food to be all vegetarian. I was happy with this provided there were vegetarian replacements for the protein and I could bring my own personal kangaroo jerky snacks. T was ok with this when we were first talked about food. T then organised the food mentioning in our group chats how much calories we’d need and that it would be based on what they’d used on previous walks. Campers Pantry and Feed the Hike also came on board as sponsors. Campers Pantry sent us all some of their meals for us to try and both Tessa and I mentioned to T that they needed something to be added as they seemed to be small portions and didn’t provide enough energy. I suggested adding rice to the meals. Tessa and I also made and dehydrated some meals and snacks to help and I also had a lot of leftover non-perishable food from Outward Bound we could use. Outward Bound came on as a sponsor early on which I helped organise as that’s where I work. There sponsor money went towards safety such as the group inReach. The route at that stage seemed straight forward following the Australian Alps Walking Track for the majority of the expedition with detours to the peaks. Tessa was going to sort out the first aid kit for us. Australian Geographic also came on board a bit later as a sponsor. I would have liked to help out a bit more with the planning however T didn’t delegate much to us and said she was happy to do the prep when we offered to help.
As what can happen on any expedition things don’t go to plan and this one was no exception. First we had the fires which burnt through a lot of our intended route and closed the national parks. This meant we would have to reroute and also change our starting point. The starting point was changed from Mt Franklin to Wee Jasper and we wouldn’t be going through Namadgi National Park and the Bimberi Wilderness. Then Covid hit. I got back to family in QLD just before the borders closed for the first time. Tessa, being a doctor, was busy and spent some time on the Covid ward. We then had no idea when the expedition would start and if it would even go ahead.
We finally had a start date a month later than originally planned. We all met together for the first time at Wee Jasper Station a few days before starting to sort the last few things out. I ran a get to know each other and an expectations session. Tessa went through the first aid with us and we also went through our medical information. T went through the maps for the first section with us but wanted to leave the food sorting and dividing until the morning we started. We also set up and tested the inReaches, tents and bothy.
Section 1
Start: Wee Jasper Station
Finish: Rules Point
Days: 8
Distance: 134km
Route Overview:
After starting at the Wee Jasper Station we headed south roughly following the Goodradigbee River. We then made our way down to Long Plain Road and to our food stash at Coolamine Homestead. After picking up our stash we headed out along Long Plain Road to Rules Point.
After sorting and dividing the food we started walking by late morning. The first day wasn’t a big day of walking. I thought we could have gone a bit further especially since we started late however T said her knee was starting to hurt. I felt it was a bit early to already start having issues with joints especially after not much and fairly easy walking so far. When we got to setting up the tent we realised the poles had somehow been mixed up. Tessa and I took some sections out of one of the poles so we could set it up. We did this while reassuring T this wouldn’t break it by taking sections out and this was how you repair sections on tent poles. It surprised me they didn’t know how to do this given the amount of years of experience they said they had. There were two 2-3 person tents however T wanted to only take one on the first section to save on weight as there were only three of us for the first section. I was a bit sceptical of only taking one as it would be cramped and would have heaps of condensation. The following morning I was right with the condensation. The outer of our sleeping bags were also wet from the condensation. T then wanted to put the expedition on hold for a day so they could dry there gear out. We decided to get Angela to bring out the other tent. While waiting T would have time to dry there stuff out and we could leave as soon as we had the second tent. While waiting I had a walk around the campsite and found a camp fire that hadn’t been put out. This was the second camp fire in just as many days I had found still lit. After the summer we had just had with the fires I was shocked to still find people leaving lit campfires. I put both of the fires out. We again left late in the morning.
As we left late two days in a row we really needed to cover some ground to make it to our food stash before we ran out of food. We ended up walking into the night to make up some time and distance. The following day we come across some wild pigs and piglets just after lunch. We slowly walked around them and as we did the adults formed a circle around the piglets. They then took off up into the bush so we then walked back towards the track so be surprised by piglets running out of a hole just in front of us. We quickly backed up as we weren’t exactly sure were the adults were and could only here them in the bush. After that we gave the whole area where we had seen them a wide birth. Soon afterwards T had a breakdown because of the encounter with the wild pigs and wanted to stop. We ended up stopping for the night and T didn’t want to have any dinner. This was concerning as we still had a far bit of distance to cover to get to the food stash. Also the fact that T didn’t want any dinner in this type of environment and the amount of energy we would be using hiking and staying warm.
The following two days we covered a decent amount of distance but not enough to catch up on the amount we were behind. We also realised that we were out of lunches so one lunch was chocolate ANZAC biscuits that my Mum had made and dried fruit which also meant we wouldn’t have a lunch the following day and would just be eating snacks until we got to the food stash. We also had the last dinner so if we didn’t get to the food stash the following day we wouldn’t have dinner. On any hikes that I’ve done I was always pack some sort of a spare meal in case of an emergency or things don’t go as intended. T didn’t seem to have packed any spare meals and seemed surprised when we had run out of lunches. I knew we were getting low on food and would potentially not have enough meals especially considering the amount of half days we did. Looking back I wish I had expressed my concerns earlier and maybe Angela could have dropped us out some more food when we crossed the Brindabella Road. I was already messaging her as we changed our pick up point where Pete (a work colleague) and her where going to get us and take us down to Adaminaby where we were going to have a rest day. Although that was a bit of a hassle as my inReach was sending the messages to different people than I would tell it to. For some reason it hadn’t synced properly and I could only fix it once I got back into decent reception.
We then had our biggest day to get to the food stash and also our first patches of snow. On the way we stopped near a knoll and had a little bit of reception. We sent of a recording for a radio interview in case we wouldn’t have reception when we were due to do it. However after about an hour of waiting for T to send it and not being sure if it actually sent we decided to keep going. It had actually sent and thankfully we did do it as we didn’t have any reception when we were due to do it. T also received the news that there film that they had entered into a film festival wasn’t accepted and shortly after had another breakdown. We needed to keep going to get to the food stash so unlike last time when we ended up stopping for the night we didn’t have the option this time. T was suggesting we cut across and go off track to Colamine Homestead. However at the pace we were going we potentially would be doing part of it in the dark and on the map they had the area had lots of creeks, marshes and sinkholes marked. T was also the only one of us that had experience in this area (My work does run programs in this area but I hadn’t been on them yet. I have since being on programs in the area). My experience with that type of off track sections was that it would take a lot longer to navigate and would be dangerous at night. T was not in a mental state to make sound decisions and both Tessa and I didn’t want to go off track for the sake of a little bit of distance. Eventually after Tessa and I talked to T and expressed our concerns we got moving again staying on the trail. We made it to Colamine Homestead just on dark and didn’t waste too much time getting the food stash and dinner.
After our big day and getting to our food stash we could relax a bit and decided we would only do a half day today. We had also changed our pick up point from Kiandra to Rules Point which was less distance to cover. Tessa and I decided to head down to Blue Water Holes and have a look around while T stayed behind. While crossing one the creeks at Blue Water Holes Tessa pointed out a kangaroo that was crossing behind me. As I tried to look I lost my footing and fell into the water. Thankfully I managed to keep my shoes dry that I was carrying and my camera bag kept my camera dry even though it went under. I also had a dry mid-layer I put on so stayed pretty warm thankfully. We got back for lunch and then headed to Coinbile Hut.
The final day of the section was a pretty easy day as we only needed to walk down the mostly flat Long Plain Road to Rules Point. T got a bit grumpy on the walk as Tessa and I were walking a bit ahead of them as we were faster walkers. T mentioned something about not walking too fast and that they’d walked 50km in a day on previous hikes. At the pace T was walking I’m not sure how walking 50km in a day is possible and not sure what the issue was. We could have made it to Rules Point with hours to spare but the weather was drizzly so I didn’t really like the idea of waiting there for that long. Long Plain Hut wasn’t too far of the Long Plain Road so suggested we go up to it for lunch. T believed it had burnt in the fires as she thought that’s what one of the rangers told her. Looking at one of the maps that were on one of the signs we had walked passed I had a feeling it had it shown as not been burnt. We decided to head up to it for lunch even though T was somewhat reluctant as she was trying to get reception to contact the accommodation we had in Adaminaby to see if we could stay another night. We were pleasantly surprised that it was still standing even though a lot of the bush around it was burnt. We relaxed for a bit once we got there and had lunch as we now had time to spare. After a while we headed out. T was still anxious about contacting the accommodation. I wasn’t too concerned as we could bunk down at Pete’s place if we needed to, which I mentioned to T but didn’t seem to help. Eventually we got a patch of reception and contacted the accommodation and it was all fine to stay longer. We still got to Rules Point with plenty of time to spare. After getting to our accommodation we all had nice warm showers and then headed to the pub for a meal that we didn’t need to carry or cook ourselves.
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