The author, pondering his many options. Photos / Michael Botur
The author, pondering his many options. Photos / Michael Botur
Twenty years ago in a pub in England, an unfit-looking Aussie told me that Australia’s highest mountain – Mount Kosciuszko (2228 metres) – was so easy to surmount you could push a bicycle up it. I didn’t believe him – so I flew to New South Wales in hot, sticky December 2022, and drove into the Snowy Mountains to see for myself if the continent’s highest peak was easier to climb than to spell.
Thredbo – a ski town in winter and a mountain biking mecca in summer – is located in the heart of Kosciuszko National Park, so it’s the most direct way to get to the summit, although Kosciuszko can be approached from a handful of other directions. The park itself is about the size of the Coromandel. Combined, the dozen-or-so national parks across the Australian Alps total over 12,000 square kilometres.
To get to Thredbo, fly to Auckland then over the ditch to Canberra and head to dusty, dry Jindabyne. Just 35km beyond the town, snowgums and whitewater rapids begin as the land quickly rises hundreds of metres.
Thredo markets itself as Australia’s best ski resort and summer adventure destination. Although many small hamlets flourish in the New South Wales mountains during snowy season, Thredbo is where money has been most carefully invested to draw tourists. The town is unmistakably branded, the streets are immaculately clean, and trails are perfectly signposted.
Chalets and classy restaurants are built in the tight “V” of a valley so steep that apart from carparks at the start and the end of the village, you have to use a series of labyrinthine paths and stairs to get between the alpine-themed buildings – Hahnenkamm Chalet, Winterhaus Lodge, Tyrola, Schlupwinkle. Bunnies and wallabies hop between buildings, crimson rosella parrots flit through the trees, and there are echidnas, wombats, emus and deer crossing the highway, plus plenty of kangaroos.
Getting up Mt Kosciuszko begins with taking a chairlift, getting off and trudging up a steel grille path designed to help in all seasons – it drains snow in winter while keeping hikers from trampling the wetlands as summer snowmelt creates hundreds of streams, including the Snowy River.
Six kilometres of speedy hiking from the top of the chairlift will get you to the top of Australia’s highest mountain. This can be done in 1-1.5 hours - though a generous two-hour trudge (one way) will give you time for lots of photos and for your kids to play in the snow. You won’t need to carry a huge amount of water as the streams are drinkable, though dressing for all weather conditions is essential – a typical day brings face-scorching sunshine, squalls of drizzle, as well as clouds so thick they can block all visibility.
When it’s clear, the landscape is Tolkien-esque, with cobblestone paths, mountain meadows and craggy boulders. You’ll encounter Australia’s highest everything – highest cycle trail (2124m), highest restaurant (1937m), highest public toilets (2100m). The hills are dotted with tarns, lakes and bogs. Frogs croak all summer long, jet-black ravens jeer at the ant-trail of hikers and there are grasshoppers, weevils and lizards on the path. Moths and butterflies frolic, with the park celebrating its special bogong moths which fly south from Queensland every spring to congregate in huge numbers in alpine caves.
In fact, the moths may have been the reason for the first indigenous ascent of Mt Kosciusko – bogong moths were a food source which drew people up into the mountaintops, so it’s thought one of the local Ngarigo Aboriginal people likely made the first ascent. Official credit, however, goes to Polish scientist and adventurer Sir Paweł Edmund Strzelecki, who in March 1840 named the mountain for Tadeusz Kościuszko, a patriotic 1700s Polish army officer who helped the American Revolution, led a national insurrection in his homeland – and never set foot in Australia.
After the photo op, the walk back downhill is quicker, especially if you catch the final chairlift at 5pm (it’s a leg-punishing two hours downhill for those who miss the chairlift). Families who make it out while it’s still sunny can dip in the icy Thredbo River which runs through town.
For those who prefer a more scenic trail to the top of the mountain, Dead Horse Gap is a great option. Terribly named but terribly beautiful, the trail - on the southern side of Kosciuszko - moves through snowgum trees, waterfalls and alpine flowers down a path on which skinks, grasshoppers and beetles sun themselves (and yes, sometimes yellow-bellied black snakes, which this writer spotted but failed to photograph).
Some people want more leg punishment after going up and down the steep trails, in which case one can hire a bike and slam oneself against Australia’s steepest mountain biking trails.
Chairlifts take punters to three starting points up in the mountains where 40 kilometres of intense, high-speed, high-impact downhill mountain biking trails are on offer. The hills swarm with bikers in summer, mostly covered in plastic armour, breastplates and goggles – sensible considering the extreme hairpin turns, high speeds, lurking boulders and tourists who haplessly wander onto mountain bike trails.
Prices to stay in Thredbo can be a bit startling - $NZ300 for chairlifts and bike hire, $80 for parking a car for six days in the National Park… and seven bucks for a chapstick – though revenue pays for state-of-the-art chairlifts, immaculate pathways, signage and flawless trails.
So: can you literally get a pushbike up to the top of Kosciuszko? It’s a yes and a no. People have been guided in wheelchairs to the top, though they’ve needed a team to help get over snowbanks and out of cobblestone ruts. Bikes are supposed to stop 500m shy of the summit at Australia’s highest toilets, but anyone wanting to break the rules could, in theory, push or pedal their bike to the top.
Michael Botur is an award-winning writer and occasional Midweek contributor.
