1
Christmas Eve 2017
As Christmas and New Year approached we luckily managed to organize one last trip in 2017.
Looking back 2016 and 2017 were the years I had wonderful hike trips as many as possible.
Literally I've been having my golden times.
We took 3 days off of work and made it 8 days' trip including weekends.
Unfortunately Suze had another trip planned by herself into the States.
We dropped her off at Sydney Air Port on Christmas Eve around 10am and continued our road trip
to Bright in Victoria.
We went to Bright last March and we fell in love with the town and surrounding mountains.
We arrived in Bright almost 6pm.
Our accommodation was one bed room cottage in the midst of quiet residential area.
We had a quiet and comfortable night there preparing for the next day's big hike in Mt Bogong.
Rarely we enjoyed a muscato rose to savour and congratulate our upcoming trip.
2
Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2017
Alpine National Park: Mt Bogong and Heathy Spur
Last time we were debating between Mt Bogong and Mt Feather Top and did Mt Feather Top.
So we wanted to do Mt Bogong as number 1 priority this time.
Mt Bogong is the highest Mt as 1986 metres in Victoria and according to a walk guide I read it takes one day.
What does it mean?
Hard!
Grade 4 and 5 in winter.
In the morning I realized I didn't bring our hats.
Luckily we could purchase our caps from the petrol station on the way to my huge relief.
We parked our car at the Mountain Creek picnic area where several tents were up and no one was seen
outside their tents yet at already around 9 am.
Morning air was still quite chilly for me.
After half an hour walk on the easy flat way we met an entrance for steep ascent through a deep forest of Peppermint Gums.
We climbed up and up and met a guy climbing down from the top around 11 am and had a chat.
He warned us not to underestimate this mountain as a beast according to him which turned out to be true later on when we came down.
It was a deep shady forest until midday and I was doing quite all right with on going strenuous inclines.
Eddie decided to cook our lunch at that time and when we were eating we saw three people come up from down
passing us.
After lunch we went back to the track when I realized the terrain was changed into treeless plains.
The top was seen far away on the open narrow track which looked like a thin line in the midst of crowded dark green short shrubs.
I was shocked and overwhelmed with sudden changes of scenery and its indescribable out of world beauty.
It looked like a flat plain with millions of yellowish flat mosses or lichens from distance but as we walked closer they were short but tangled trees.
It was a real optical illusion.
We immensely enjoyed the beauty of this terrain all the way to the summit.
We arrived at the top at 2 pm and 3 people we saw before were relaxing there enjoying their lunch.
I newly learned the term, spur as landscape via this hike and it was extremely impressive to me.
Not like usual mountains I have encountered so far this mountain top on the spur was so different and beautiful
and even relaxing to me if you know what I mean.
It took us to reach the top of Mt Bogong around 5 hours including lunch so we estimated it would be much quicker
to go down.
But unfortunately after a couple hours of gruelling descent I realized my legs and knees a little bit buckled which made
our progress very slow.
Normally Eddie would boast we are not ordinary hikers but experienced ones.
But that day I was just below ordinary when descending.
By the time we arrived at the starting point it was quarter to 6 already.
Which means it took a total of 8 and 45 minutes to do this big hike.
At the end of our hike I was happy as usual with this beautiful hike and was not too excited about my weakened
knees honestly at the same time.
Due to this I talked to Eddie to adjust our hike plan that night.
The next day we were supposed to do another big hike to Mt Mcleod in Buffalo National Park and then move
to do 2 nights and 3 days camping hike at Jagungal areas.
Suddenly we booked another 2 nights nearby at Yackandandah (as Bright was fully booked the next two days already)
instead of camping and amended our hike into a relatively easy one the next day to Heathy Spur in Alpine National Park.
It was an only 4 hour easy hike on the wide plain near Falls Creek.
I still remember it was a long winding road which made me feel car sick on the way there.
But we were again extremely impressed with this place.
It was like a hidden gem we re-found and appreciated.
Eddie really admired its pure beauty which made me feel less guilty about doing a relatively easy one due to
my physical condition.
We had unusually a long lunch session enjoying the scenery and chilled out under the harsh sun.
I felt it's one of the most beautiful wild flower gardens made by a god or goddess.
