It’s rare that the alpine weather gods favour a hiking group for a whole trip. Regardless of the time of year, they usually like to throw in a storm or blizzard, just to keep interlopers in their realm on their toes. We must have got our incantations right for our recent trip into the Mt Gungartan region of the Jagungal Wilderness area as Mother Nature gave us all we could ask for, dusting the mountain tops with snow for three days before we arrived, then laying on some glorious alpine sunshine for the duration of the walk.
As one of our group of eight students and two adults was doing her Gold Qualifying Journey, the hike needed to be four days long and feature around eight hours each day of hiking. Just to spice things up, most of the route would explore the large, untracked wilderness to the north-west of Guthega Power Station. Over the course of the expedition, students learned to correlate the markings on their map with the world of creeks and peaks they were traversing, leading us to our intended campsites each evening with a minimum of misdirection.
Another joy of this area is that it is dotted with historic huts. While there are not tracks to guide you there, once we found them, they offered a warm communal area as the evening temperatures dropped below zero. Each hut has its own character and a unique history. These ranged from our first night’s stopover, Tin Hut, which was built for cross-country skiing, to the old homestead Mawson Hut, the former gold mine at Grey Mare hut, and the appropriately red-with-love-hearts decoration of Valentine Hut.
After four days of uneven ground, chilly nights and increasingly daring river crossings, it was a tired but satisfied group that climbed out of our mini-bus at the end of the trip. Morale was good for the entire walk, leading to a rewarding shared experience.
