Chairlift up the mountain

Home > Treks > Kosciuszko > Day 2 > 2.1

A NERVOUS anticipation always fills me on the day I climb to the summit of a mountain. There are always so many unknowns in such hostile changeable places. Anything could happen during an ascent, and of course there’s no guarantee of reaching the top.

The road to Threadbo

Rain had fallen overnight, but it was had cleared by the early morning. The sky dawned still mostly covered in cloud at around 2000 metres.

We set off from our base at Jindabyne following the road up through the Threadbo Valley. The valley very much reminded me of New Zealand with its rounded mountains towering over the glacial valley carved out in ice ages past.

The road markings were all orange. During winter snow falls to low levels. The white markings you would normally see on a road turn almost invisible against the snow. Yellow is easier to see.

As we continued following the valley upstream, the farmland gave way to snow gum forest rising from the valley floor up the mountains on either side. Large areas of these trees were dead though. Perhaps this was due to a disease affecting the forests. The forest gradually thinned with increasing altitude to alpine grassland at the very top of the ridge.

At one point we stopped at a toll booth to pay a park use fee. The lady at the counter said conditions will be pretty good on the mountain today.

Start of the chairlift

Soon the stark subalpine gorge with its pristine montane forest gave way to a collection of resorts making up Threadbo Village. Construction of the village began in 1957 after the road was completed as part of the Snowy Mountain Hydro-electric scheme.

Upon reaching Threadbo we headed across a bridge over the river to the chairlift. There was quite a queue there of like-minded people wanting to climb Australia’s highest mountain. A sign at the front of the building said the temperature at the top of the chairlift was 3 degrees with wind speed of 41 kilometres per hour. I looked at the people in the queue. Most people there seemed to be reasonably well prepared. I was thankful that I was wearing my polar fleece top. I’ll definitely need that up the mountain. Not everyone else was as prepared though. Some Chinese ladies standing in front of me were wearing sandals. They won’t get very far up there in the alpine terrain.

Starting the ride on the chairlift

Finally with tickets bought we headed over to the chairlift. Now we are both scared of heights and neither of us had been on a chairlift before. We were both tense in anticipation and at the last moment he decided to go to a café to get his morning coffee fix.

When that was over we headed up the stairs to the start of the Kosciuszko Express chairlift. There were a couple of groups of cyclists being briefed by their leaders. Apparently they will be riding the chairlift up the mountain before cycling back down along the ski routes.

We climbed into one of the chairs. At the time we didn’t know there was a bar that we are supposed to pull down over our heads so we rode up it precariously perched on the seat hanging onto the rail behind our heads.

The mountain

The chairlift initially started a steep incline before levelling out. The chairlift followed a row of metal structures along a twelve metre wide grassy clearing through the forest. Threadbo Village quickly dropped behind us.

From the top of the incline I could see the enormous rise we had yet to cover. From bottom to top there was an altitude gain of 560 metres over the 1800 metre journey. The grade was fairly gentle at the bottom but it gradually steepened towards a rocky bluff at the top where I could see the other end of the chairlift.

Climbing the mountain

The clearing widened. I could see the ski runs below me. There wasn’t any snow at this time of year so they had been converted into cycling tracks. On either side of the clearing was thick forest of snow gums. The trees immediately on either side were healthy, but there were large patches of dead forest, particularly along the main ridges.

The slope we were climbing was getting steeper and at times we were over fifteen metres above the ground. It was an awful long way to fall down. It ascended to the top of a gentle spur where the slope lessened a little before the final steep climb to the top.

Rocky outcrop

The grassy ski run suddenly gave way to large rocky outcrops towering out of thick subalpine scrub. The trees on either side were very gnarly and the forest was quickly thinning as we approached the treeline, where it was too cold for them to grow. One outcrop we passed jutted out about ten metres at 45 degrees.

There was just a hundred metres to go to the building at the top. It was perched on top of a 15 metre high granite cliff face. The wind suddenly picked up causing out little carriage to swing from side to side with each gust. It was rather terrifying going up over the top of the cliff, but at the top the pylon put us almost on the level for the final 20 metres into the building.

View from the top

Relieved to be standing back on solid ground we walked through the small building to the other side from where we could see back down the Threadbo Valley carved out by a glacier in past ice ages. We were at 1930 metres above sea level.

A sign showing a map of all the trails indicated the Mount Kosciuszko lookout was two kilometres away. The summit itself was 6.5 kilometres away. With just 298 metres to climb, this was potentially going to be a relatively easy mountain trek.