Feathertop – the 2006 version

Trip Leader – Graeme Nelson

Participants – Steve Poole

Steve England

Ted Cole (retired hurt)

The logistics were difficult, but not impossible. I picked up Steve Poole early Saturday evening, 19^th August, after he had spent the day working flat out servicing and repairing the cycles of Sydneysiders desperate for the return of their vehicles while there was still weekend time left for riding pleasure.

Our destination was Cobungra, about 30 kms from Mt Hotham on the Omeo side, where we were to meet up with Club member and AT aficionado Graeme Nelson on his bush hideaway property to prepare for our trip to Feathertop. Graeme has made a number of trips to Feathertop over recent years, but still has many “must-do” new lines in his little black book.

The fourth member of our party was Ted Cole, Graeme’s neighbour at Cobungra – stone mason and ski bum extraordinaire – who has been building a wonderfully eccentric stone house around himself for the past 6 or so years and survived the 2003 fires which burnt out his tiny shack, his ginseng crop and vehicles on his property. Ted’s Feathertop background goes back to the mid-80’s and he has seen a lot of action out there over the years.

But before we arrived at Cobungra, a short detour out to Mt Beauty on Sunday morning for Steve P to register for the Kangaroo Hoppit on the 26^th and to stash his skating gear at race headquarters. The plan was for Steve to leave Feathertop early, walk out to Harrietville by himself via Bungalow Spur and to get around to Falls Creek for the start of the Hoppit!!

Snow conditions and weather reports didn’t make for hopeful conversation, so we talked up the chances for our trip by recounting experiences from previous Feathertop trips over our “last supper” at Cobunga, supplemented by some good red wine.

So, away at last at 9.20 am at the start of the Razorback Ridge. This is a spectacular 11.5km route out to Feathertop. In a normal season you can ski all or most of the way and salivate at the prospect of the faces and chutes off to the east down to the Diamantina River. Mostly these get left to the imagination as it takes the best part of the day to get to Federation Hut, and it is the skiing on Feathertop itself that is the main attraction.

Of course, this has been no “normal season”, and there was very little snow on the ridge itself and less down towards the Diamantina River. So it was mostly walking in our plastic ski boots and carrying those skis. We were past Diamentina Spur before our skis went on ans stayed on.

Ted was the first casualty about 1 and a half hours into the trip. Second hand plastic ski boots were proving not to be the greatest fit under trying circumstances and big blister problems were emerging, so he reluctantly left us and turned round to head back out.

The rest of the journey across was uneventful, although a weak front came in on cue delivering some wisps of snow and a big reduction in visibility. We were glad of the comfort of the new Federation Hut after 6 and a half hours on the move and settled in to relax and rehydrate.

We woke on Tuesday morning to whiteout conditions and the start of a little wet snow. We made a lazy 11.00am start and headed off up to the saddle between Molly Hill and Feathertop to check out the likely snow conditions. We also had in mind to try to get down to MUMC Hut (Melbourne University Mountaineering Club) to check it out.

Conditions were pretty miserable at the saddle and the whiteout meant that there were going to be no views from a trip up to the main summit and beyond, so we canned that idea. We headed up the summit ridge a little way until we came to “Ted’s Slide Gully” – so called from a trip we made in 2002 where Ted, always the experimenter, had affixed light three-pin bindings to some old downhill skis, and managed a 150 metre slide after destroying his binding in the first turn at the top before being able to self-arrest after a fairly hair-raising ride. This is better known as “Gully 2”.

The snow looked OK, so we jumped in and were able to ski a fair way down. The snow was fairly wet, but not too heavy so it was quite an enjoyable run and probably worth the effort of the long boot out.

By now the mist felt quite moist and we headed down towards MUMC Hut which is about 2 kms down the North West Spur. We carried our skis part of the way because Graeme had spied some reasonable looking snow on the Northwest Spur where it meets the main western gully from the Feathertop summit.

MUMC Hut with its geodesic dome is a fantastic looking hut. The larger part of the Hut is open to the public and we made ourselves at home while we had lunch – terrific as it had now started to rain. There are 7 memorial plaques around the walls dedicated to Club members who have perished. With the exception of Fred Nottle who died on Everest in the mid 80s, I presume the rest had died on Feathertop (?) which is a very sobering thought!!

On the way back, Graeme and Steve P had a short run in the gully off Northwest Spur referred to earlier. The snow was heavy and wet, and probably only of value in scoping the run for future reference.

Wednesday brought whiteout conditions again to start with, but with a much “drier” feel. The sun was trying to break through and we caught some glimpses of blue. Today was the day to go over the summit to North Peak and to look at the skiing possibilities over there. As we climbed the summit ridge the visibility improved considerably and we were afforded fantastic views in all directions – across to Hotham and Mt Loch, over to the High Plains, to the Niggerheads and the Fainters and back towards the lush green of Harrietville. Low clouds and mist were still being blown across us, but these were interspersed with sunshine and blue.

We had two fantastic runs down Hellfire Gully. Despite the generally poor levels of snow on the mountain we were able to get about 340 vertical metres. The snow was quite hard – a crust which thankfully held – with the thinnest layer of new snow on top (mind you there was some “post-holing” on the boot out straight up the gully – we found that with the poor snow conditions, the gullies were generally not wide enough to skin up and so booting out was the only viable option). On the second run, Graeme took a particularly narrow variant skiing down over our boot line. In places the gully was only a few metres wide!

On the way back over the main summit we checked out the lines down Avalanche Gully and figured that despite the limited snow it was possible. If we got good conditions tomorrow….Graeme and Steve P had enough energy left for one final run down Gully 3, starting in from the south face of the main ridge visible from Hotham. Then it was back to the hut for copious cups of tea and a great dinner in front of the fire.

All good things have to come to an end. It rained most of the night and so the decision was made to pull the plug on the trip on Thursday morning. Avalanche Gully would have to wait until another time, as would all of the fantastic gullies on the western side of North Peak. You could ski there for a month and not exhaust all of the lines!!

Graeme and I said goodbye to Steve P as he headed off down Bungalow Spur for the 9 km trip to Harrietville. We lent him an EPIRB “just in case”. Graeme and I retraced our steps back across the Razorback Ridge. Because of the lack of snow across most of the route, it was easy to follow the summer track in the whiteout conditions. The second half of the trip was pretty miserable in persistent rain, and then, just to remind us that you always have to “earn” a trip to Feathertop we encountered about a km and a half where we alternated between walking in rotten wet mid-calf deep snow for a few hundred metres on the southern aspects of gullies, and on exposed track on the north facing aspects.

Back to Cobungra in the dark to warm ourselves in front of the fire with a beer and to reminisce about “Fantastic Wednesday”!

Steve England