This wonderful high plain area of snow grass and dwarf snow gums in New South Wales is largely above the tree line. The Kosciuszko National Park itself covers 700,00 hectares and the main access point with accommodation is Jindabyne. The southern main range area, with its glacial lakes, is over-visited by day-trippers, and awful duckboard has been used to reinforce popular tourist trails, for example from the Thredbo chairlift to the Kosciuszko summit. This peak, at 2,228m, is the highest mountain in the country.

The best walking season is spring and early autumn. Creeks may dry up in the summer.

Nevertheless, the best near-wilderness alpine walking on the mainland is found here, and one of the best 7-8 day independent walks in Australia runs through the high plains and ridges from Kiandra, an abandoned gold rush village, to Dead Horse Gap, taking in most of the high peaks. As we walked the route, the distance was 107 km.

There are few trails, or even pads along the way, and you are free to navigate your way from tor, to peak, to saddle. Even in high summer, there will be remnant snow cornices on the ridges. These days, global warming is steadily causing scrub to spread up into the old grassy high plains, and more pathways are being tramped in every year.

Once, there were many cattlemen’s huts in this area, relics of a now largely abandoned but highly romantic lifestyle, where sheep and cattle were brought up by the man from Snowy River and his mates every spring to graze through
to the first snows of autumn, a way of life the French call transhumance. Well the cattlemen are now long gone, and virtually all the huts have been destroyed in a recent series of bushfires. On our  Mountain Huts page we present a number of drawings and photos of these delightful historic structures.

In summer, this is a hot, dry area, and the flies make walking very trying. Surprisingly, there is snowfall and stormy weather virtually every summer, and autumn is probably the best walking season. We have done a number of extended snow-camping XC skiing trips here, but sadly, global warming is rapidly destroying the wilderness skiing potential. Incidentally, trees, scoparia,  and shrubs are now colonising the high plains, and increasingly there are pads and paths where once there was simply trackless snowgrass. The flanks of the mountains are home to some of the world’s biggest trees — Alpine Ash and Mountain Ash.

Overseas visitors may be surprised to find that

the best walking guide to the area, Charles Warner’s Bushwalking in Kosciusko National Park, does not present track notes for specific treks, but rather gives overall descriptions of the terrain so walkers can put together their own itineraries and walk from peak to peak.

Klaus Hueneke is the author of a series of

beautifully illustrated books on the Australian Alps. In particular, we couldn’t have planned any of our many Kossie trips without his Huts of the High Country, and Kiandra to Koscusko.

Link to John Chapman’s Kosciuszko booklist...

Link to general information about Kosciuszko...

Link to the Kosciuszko Huts Association...

Link to the wonderful Klaus Hueneke books...