Intro to Mountaineering Course - Feathertop

I helped out with a Victorian Climbing Club trip on the weekend to a peak called Mt. Feathertop. Feeling pretty tired today. This was a course to give basic instruction to people who are interested in mountaineering. Mt. Featherop is the second highest mountain in Victoria and is a beautiful looking peak. We were hoping for a fair covering of snow, but recent warm weather meant that most of the snow had gone except for the summit ridge.

Drove up to Harrietville on Friday night, and stayed in the caravan park. We hiked up the Bungalow Spur up the Feathertop hut on Saturday morning in about 4 hours. The gradient is quite good on this track and easy to hike. We camped near the hut, and then headed off to practise self-arrest techniques. We struggled to find snow. There was very little around. In the end, I sunk two t-slot anchors into the snow, and we roped people up and let them self arrest from the summit cornice. A bit intimidating, but reasonably safe.

Slept well that night, getting to bed at 8pm as it got very dark and cold.

Up at 4.30am the next morning, and an alpine start saw us away at 5.15am. There was a bit of rain and wind during the night. Three of the party decided to sleep in, so 9 of us set off in the dark. We quickly climbed Feathrtop, saw the sun rise through a gap in the clouds, and set off to descend a ridge to the far valley. We soon picked a line across to the next ridge, and started our alpine climb. Initially it was low grade rockclimbing on poor wet rock, which I struggled a bit since I had a huge pack on with gear, ropes, water etc. Everyone else except Eric was without a pack and climbing reasonably quickly. The first two or three pitches of the climb were quite scary and exposed, with us using a rope for some of this climb. We soon were pulling up on scrub and wet vegetation, as slight rain fell, then strengthened to heavy rain, then sleet, hail. Finally snow began to fall as the wind picked up. I was pretty slow. The pack weighed me down a lot, and I was reasonably tired from previous efforts (24hr Rogaine, for one). But we kept moving and ascended the ridge.

It was a pretty good alpine climb, and it would have been much easier with snow on the ridge. We reached the summit again, and were hit by 100km/h winds from the storm. We struggled down along the hiking trail, and at one point was blown off my feet by the wind. I thought about carrying a large rock in my arms to stop me being blown off balance, but decided against it in the end. We ended up crouched down for a while until the gusts abated. We then headed down again, leaning insanely into the wind.

Finally we reached the tree line, and back to the tents around the hut. We ate and drank a lot in the hut (with the fire going to warm us - thanks Matt!), then packed up our wet tents and gear, and left about 12 noon. It was 2 hrs down to the cars at a moderate pace, then off to the pub for a quick beer and drive home.

All in all, a good weekend, and major workout. Feet were a bit trashed from being wet, and heavy packs. But overall went reasonably well.

Victorian Rogaining Champs - Tallangatta

Entered the 24hr Victorian rogaining champs held in Tallangatta, about 4 hours north of Melbourne. We entered a team of 4 people including Mick, Ian, Martin and myself. All strong rogainers with previous experience. The bus trip up there was a bit of a nightmare, with the bus getting lost and arriving at 1am (7.5 hours later) for what should be a 4 hour trip. Luckily I was able to sleep most of the way and arrived, pitched our tent and fell asleep pretty quickly.

We set off at noon the next day after checking in, filling our packs with food and clothes, and plotting our course for the next 24hrs. The terrain was very steep around us in a ring, with the hash house in the middle in pastoral land. So we decided to go up into the hills immediately and pick off as many high value checkspoints as we could while we still felt fresh.

Our tactics worked reasonably well, and time soon moved along. We managed to get a lot of points early on, and moved well together with some great navigation along the way. Martin led most of the navigation and managed to find every checkpoint throughout the 24hrs - an excellent effort. I managed to find a few myself, mainly because i had more watts in my headlamp than the others. Between 2am-5am I went through a rough patch, where I got really cold and sleepy. We decided to skip a few checkpoints that were in reasonably hard terrain and keep to the main tracks and pick off checkpoints to the side of the tracks. This turned out to be a good idea considering how we were feeling. I think I didn't eat enough food during this time, since once I had eaten a bunch of apples at a waterstation I felt much better and warmer than before. Once 5am came, and the first rays of sunshine appeared, I felt remarkably better and we were able to pick up the speed a find many more checkpoints.


In the end we came in 2nd overall, and won the Men's division.

Victorian Mens Rogaining Champion - I like that.