Main Range Hike this weekend.
After we had all set up we got out our smaller day packs, strapped our poles and snowshoes to them and then went for our first run down into the valley which was reasonably short, bit like Perisher FV V8. From there the slog got even harder up to club lake and then up onto Carruthers Peak, took a bit over an hour to get up to the top.
SLOG
Took us a while to get up there but it was well worth it, the views are pretty spectacular of the surrounding mountains although Townsend was kinda shrouded in cloud which was a pity.
Approaching Club Lake
On the way to the top the grade got a lot steeper at the lip, courtesy probably of the remnants of what probably was a fair cornice in mid winter, I seriously got within about 3 metres of the summit before bad footing caused me to slide about 20m backwards on my knees despite jamming poles and kicking snow shoes into the su
rface, was just to soft to get a grip. I abandoned the snowshoes and kicked deep bootholes second time around and got u
p ok.
Up the top and the view across to the Sentinel with Watsons Crags in the distance, there was some very recent rockslides on the Sentinel
The track around the top of the bowl at Club Lake, Carruthers Peak is the highest point you get to, at the other end of this ridge line it Mt Lee from what Bear told me, our first proper line was dropping in from the highest point you can see in this pic.
This pic is to the left of the sentinel and is like part of the Townsend ridges I think.
This is before dropping into our first run, the grade on this thing is deceptive, it’s easily got everything I have ridden in Perisher covered including Olympic easily, put everything I did Heliboarding to shame as well unfortunately. You roll over the top and into and are like oh shit this is way steeper than I thought. The spring corn snow really lets you get your edges deep in and inspires confidence though which is good
Got to the bottom of that one pretty buzzing, relatively short but fairly sweet. We elected to go back up the way we came and got to the top again after maybe 40mins slog. I was pretty busted up by this stage and we took a breather and stopped for lunch of smoked salmon, tomato and cheese on a wrap.
We were heading back to do the Club Lake and take on one of the shoots when Bear decided he wanted to do something off the back down of Carruthers.
Pretty sure this was the start of this run.
This pic is of Bear a little ways from me, gives you a sense of scale
Walking out from that run down the back, you can see our tracks running down the snow in the background
That looks amazing, you must be super stoked with your weekend !!!
This is some of the terrain further down into the Townsend ridge bits and pieces I think, if there had been more snow I would gone down into that ravine regardless of how long it took to walk out.
After that it was a long hard slog back to the top of the Club Lake Bowl but this time around we elected to have a crack at Mt Lee I think it was. We got there after about an hour or so and then took a breather. Strengely enough we ran into some of Ozgirls friends I had met in the Banjo closing weekend when I was wasted, names forgotten unfortunately but we had a bit of chat before we headed off down the hill.
Got a vid of Bear coming down Mt Lee which I will link to when it’s uploaded.
After that we were truly wrecked, was about 3pm and we had probably covered 12km or more and over 1500m of vertical so we headed back to our camp. We got back there and sat down in the sun out of the wind on the west facing side of the gully on the grass and chilled out for a couple of hours letting our stuff dry. After a while our chosen camp site started to give us a bit of worry in relation to possible avalanche. We walked up and had a bit of a closer inspection of the serac I guess you could call it.
It looked a lot more sinister in the late arvo than the morning and after a bit of discussion we elected to rather be safe than covered under 30tonnes of snow and ice and reloctaed down onto the valley floor. It was my first go board with a full 35kg pack on and damn does that give you some extra speed!
We got sorted out, had some soup for dinner and I finished off the remainder of my Jimmy and Coke, so worth taking it BTW, and crawled into quite possibly my worst purchase this year. My new sleeping bag was like trying to stuff myself into a body condom, not a nice feeling at all. Typical Murphy’s Law, once I was finally in and had some semblance of comfort I needed to piss bad. I extricated myself from the bag and did what I needed to do out the front of the tent. I was so knackered after that I feel asleep anyway despite the comfort factor.
I needed another spot of relief later in the night and tried to go the same way as before, unfortunately I got a massive cramp in my hammie and almost ended up golden showering the whole tent. Bear must have some good karma owed as I managed to abort mission before the unwanted shower and pulled myself together!
In the morning the weather had taken a bit of turn for the worse so between serious exhaustion, muscular pain and general tiredness we packed up and hiked out of there. We had a really quick trip out including river corssing it took us right on an hour to get back to the car. Happily I got home at 3pm and I’m typing this TR from the couch, sore, tired but very satisfied and happy with our efforts!
great TR!
Looks like an awesome trip!
haha I am everywhere!!! Lou and Wombat would be their names. When you were wasted at banjo’s they did invite us out with them!
Sounds like a cracker of a trip. I caught the hiking big on the 1st October when we decided to find some fresh tracks as eyre was packed and slushy as. We hiked over the back of mt p and then rode an untouched run to the bottom and hiked the mountain on the CP side of mt p. we thought about hiking the next mountain but we didn’t have any equipment or food/water with us so we headed back. Got a drink from the creek.
Definately something I would like to do properly next year, glad you enjoyed it.
Bear coming down Mt Lee
Nice report mate, really enjoyed reading it. Do you ever hike in winter?
Bear coming down Mt Lee
http://s143.photobucket.com/albums/r156/nthnbeachesguy/Main Range Hiking Trip Oct 2012/?action=view¤t=PA190194-1.mp4
http://s143.photobucket.com/albums/r156/nthnbeachesguy/Main Range Hiking Trip Oct 2012/?action=view¤t=PA190194-1.mp4
If someone can make this link work that would be great, cheers.
I am guessing the problem is you’re trying to link a video file in an image tag. You probably need to upload it to youtube or vimeo then use the youtube or vimeo tags.
Unreal Nthn!
I’d love to do that some day
I never have Mud, this is my first trip really hiking with overnight gear. It was like 90mins till we got to where we put the tent up and probably another hour till we got to the top of Carruthers Peak and it’s all reasonably hard going. Hiking around Perisher isn’t in the same ballpark, I’ve done a bit of that at Guthega, MtP and others and this makes that look very tame and easy.
I never have Mud, this is my first trip really hiking with overnight gear. It was like 90mins till we got to where we put the tent up and probably another hour till we got to the top of Carruthers Peak and it’s all reasonably hard going. Hiking around Perisher isn’t in the same ballpark, I’ve done a bit of that at Guthega, MtP and others and this makes that look very tame and easy.
that’s awesome, would love to try that someday. Some of the people at the lodge I was staying at in winter did the full deal with snow caves etc. Sounds awesome, if a bit scary.
My mate I went with opened my eyes a bit in regards to the dangers of camping out there in mid winter, things I thought you would look for were actually very wrong and could get you into trouble.
Awesome TR, im abit jelous to say the least 
i spent my weekend coughing and spluttering like a dieing mule 
nthn awesome report as usual man .... It looks like u had great time.
Cheers Lanox, I did mate, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, there’s a certain sense of satisfaction that comes with getting to the top of things after a big effort. Weirdly it didn’t really feel like I was there to snowboard, it was strange strapping in at the top, like in my head I was there primarily to climb mountains or something, can’t really explain it. I found myself trudging upwards and my imagination would take my mind on holiday for a while and I would be thinking about something else for 15mins and then all of a sudden I would be 200m further up the hill. Other times we would be walking and talking the whole way but there was plenty of times where we were just head down in our own little world of pain ha ha!
Oz I was so rooted when I saw Wombat and Lou that I might not have seemed that friendly at the time, I was so wrecked I could hardly talk so please apologise to them when you talk to them next!
Dylan, Bear reported that I was raping rhino’s during the night, so badly in fact that he ripped small pieces of my foam mat to use as earplugs ha ha!