I don’t know where or how Mount Scabby got it’s name, but I’ve seen the alluring open slabs, meadow and tarn that make up the U shaped summit area from multiple other peaks in the Namadgi Wilderness (Mounts Kelly and Burbidge, Mount Namadgi and Mount Gudgenby) enough times that a trip to Mount Scabby was unavoidable. It was my birthday in mid April, and, in leiu of parties, gifts and decadent dinners, I chose as my birthday celebration an overnight walk into the Scabby Range Nature Reserve to climb Mount Scabby. The older I get the more important these birthday events become; my annual benchmark for proving I can still “get shit done.”
There are multiple approaches to Mount Scabby, some involve more or less travel time on tracks. The final climb out of the valley is a bushwack no matter what approach you choose. We opted to walk up the Nass Valley on the Old Boboyan Fire Trail (FT). Not the shortest approach but not the longest either, and the first five kilometres were along a part of the valley we had not visited before.
I’m not a great fan of these fire trail walks as the ground tends to be hard underfoot. It would certainly be possible, if your partner was not recovering from a broken wrist, to bicycle the first 11 kilometres along the Old Boboyan FT and then Sams Creek FT. We walked, and although I did find the ground hard, the walk is pleasant enough along an open grassy valley once a farm, but now National Park.
We stopped for a break after 11 kilometres where Sams Creek FT meets Maurice Luton FT. Sams Creek FT continues north all the way to Rotten Swamp near Mount Burbidge except it is heavily overgrown now and is a bushwack all the way, most of the FT being indistinguishable from the surrounding bush especially the further north you get. Maurice Luton FT climbs up to a 1350 metre saddle before descending steeply to cross Sams Creek. The creek falls steeply through a massive tumble of large granite boulders.
The open grassland of Yaouk Creek valley is to your south as you walk along an old fire trail through open forest passing another two fire trails that lead south past farm land to the Yaouk Road (a decidedly shorter approach). We had been expecting copious water along this section given how much rain had fallen lately, but soon discovered that once we left Yaouk Creek many of the side creeks were dry. Just as we were thinking we would have to go back to find a camp, we came across a flowing stream that drains the Scabby Range near the junction of Maurice Luton FT and Reids FT. We made a good camp on soft grass under some eucalpyts and brewed up a well deserved cup of tea. Days are short, however, and within a couple of hours, it was dark and we were inside our tent.
The next day we continued along Maurice Luton FT for a couple more kilometres until we reached 1300 metres and a steep slope leading up to a southwest outlier of Mount Scabby. The first 200 metres (elevation gain) of bushwacking, while steep, was actually quite reasonable through relatively open eucalpyt forest. But, around 1500 metres that abruptly changed and for the next 200 vertical metres we fought through increasingly scrubby and thick brush eventually emerging onto a slabby clear area. We had just under 1 kilometre and 100 metres of elevation gain to the top which, from a distance, looked like more hard scrabble, but turned out to be reasonable travel again and ended in easy walking up clear granite slabs.
Mount Scabby is a U shaped mountain with the headwaters of the Cotter River cradled within the U. The 1:20,000 topographic map wrongly labels the western summit “Mount Scabby” while the eastern summit is actually higher. The entire summit area, however, is open and pleasant walking so we visited all three cairned high points, finally settling on the highest for a long lunch break. A small tarn, not the small lake known as Scabby Tarn, lies above granite corners and slabs on the long south ridge. Pleasant country once you manage to get through all the bush.
As we began our descent, a huge wedge tail eagle glided over the saddle and disappeared down the Cotter Valley. Unfortunately, our line down from the summit was just slightly tilted to the south and the fall line descent kept pulling us into thicker and thicker brush. Our initial expectation of a couple of hundred metres of dreadful bush became 500 metres descent through dreadful bush as we continuously tried to bear a little north, but terrain, granite boulders and bush all conspired to push us south.
Just after 3:00 pm we emerged from bush onto Maurice Luton FT and the short walk back to camp and cups of tea. Any thoughts of walking part way out that afternoon faded as quickly as the light and we were soon back in the tent for another frosty night.
When you’ve been asleep since 8:00 pm you tend to wake early and it was still dark when I got up and found the stove, crawled back into my sleeping bag in the tent and made us both a hot cup of coffee. Leaving camp just after 7:00 am, we walked past frosty grass on the big open plains and low fog lying along the base of the hills. A final few kilometres stony walk out watched by the mobs of kangaroos that live on the open grasslands, and the trip was over.
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