Palerang Trig

It’s funny the places you find tracks. Palerang trig is one of those funny places. There are other higher trigs and even named “mountains” in the area. Lowden trig, for example is 1346 metres high and nearby Mount Major has a 1330 metre contour. I had an idea that we might find a faint foot pad on the north ridge of Palerang but, in the end, we found a decent marked and flagged trail.

There is now a small cairn where the foot-pad leaves Palerang FT. This is pretty much where you would head up the ridge if you were using common sense to walk up. If you are somewhat careful, you should be able to follow the track all the way to the trig, although in a couple of places large trunks have fallen across the pad, and it is faint and vague in other spots.

At the top there is a giant pile of rocks and the trig. The rocks make a handy lunch spot. The view is somewhat obscured by trees but you can see down to Mulloon Creek valley, out to Lake George and around the nearby hills.

We had been hoping to continue along Mulloon FT to a small camping area and then the next day walk further west to the Black Range FT and some granite bouldering but the road was way too rough for our van and there was a tree across the road near Little Bombay Creek. Driving back out we chatted with the bloke driving the grader and he said he would drive the grader up and pull it off although his mandate was not to grade that far. A pleasant walk if you are in the area.

Mount Jagungal

 “Several sexy campsites…” With a review like that and four stars as well, who could be criticised for wanting to hike up Mount Jagungal? It’s from AllTrails, of course, although I was curious who had given the walk one star. When I scrolled through, I found the single one star review but, frustratingly, there was no comment, no description, no explanation of why this walk, that 71 out of 73 reviewers had rated at least four stars garnered such a dismal rank. I mean, how does a walk get one star, it has to be pretty terrible. Did the rater get bitten by a death adder? Attacked by a rabid fox? Trampled by a male brumby after a mare in heat? Not find a single sexy campsite? It boggles the mind. I’ve had some pretty awful trips over the years, including one where we lost our entire food drop and skied for four days through heavy rain and snow to escape with no food and I still would have given that trip more than one star.

I’ve had Jagungal on my list for years. For many years in a row I had a plan to ski up the mountain over a four day trip from Guthega, but, for those many years, the snow-pack had been so miserly and myself such a snow snob - coming from big mountains and deep snow-packs in the Canadian mountains - that I could never garner the enthusiasm to drive six hours to carry my skis across a lot of flat country side.

A bike and hike is the very best way ascend the mountain unless the idea of a loop walk predominantly on fire trails appeals. The country you pass through is very pretty however, so a two day walk would also be worth more than one star, at least by my rating system.

We had a 40 minute drive to get to Round Mountain trail-head so we started a bit later than previous days but were still away relatively early. The ground was frosty and the trail headed uphill straight away which my old body found uncomfortable. I need a reasonable warm-up these days before pumping my heart rate up to 150. After the first hill, the FT descends down to a ford on a manky bridge made of rusty corrugated metal; a hill I knew I would have to push on the way back.

After that, however, the FT is a delight, rolling along the Toolong Range across open plains with lovely views and hills which are mostly easy to ride. A few kilometres from Derschkos Hut, we met a couple of blokes hiking who warned us about a rambunctious fox breaking into packs and shared the delightful news that there was a track up the mountain. Doug and I had assumed we would be bush-bashing, so this was great news. We passed Derschkos Hut and turned onto Grey Mare FT and, shortly after Grey Mare FT plunged down into and back out of a steep creek gully, we found the trail.

We stashed the bikes in the bush and proceeded to follow the track up a short drainage through some head high scrub to gain a ridge that runs SSW from the top of Mount Jagungal. Once on the ridge, the incline laid back, the scrub cleared and it was a pleasant walk up alpine country to the top. The gently rolling high plains that spread south to the Main Range were pretty and would be nice to walk or ski across some time. The ride out was half an hour quicker than the way in but I did have to push up that first hill.

Mount Tabletop

Riding the bicycles out of Three Mile Dam Campground early on a frosty morning, the only other camper up and about gives us a thumbs up. We ride up the paved road to Selwyn Snow Resort and slip off onto Selwyn FT which climbs 50 metres up to the ridge where the lifts run during the winter ski season. In the big fires of 2020 the resort burnt completely with an extensive rebuild completed in 2023, but the resort only managed to open for a short period in 2024 because it was too difficult to maintain snow coverage with warm temperatures and lack of natural snow.

Ostensibly, Australia is committed to net zero and obsessed with meeting climate targets, and yet, the Blyton Group spent $30 million rebuilding a “snow” resort that cannot survive without artificial snow-making. This large expenditure was made possible by a sweet deal by the NSW State Government who granted a new 40 year lease and facilitated planning permissions necessary for the rebuild. Snow making, of course, uses huge amounts of power and water. Exactly how much power and water is required to maintain snow at the resort is not available in the public domain – quelle surprise! How this meshes with Australia being a climate leader is unclear, and, in essence, any individual with a normally developed level of scepticism will find the entire enterprise suspect.

If you value the natural environment, and particularly Australia’s precious and limited alpine area, you might find the plans for Selwyn Resort just a little bit disturbing. Quoting from the website:

The creation of a brand-new ‘Winter Wonderland’, the first of its kind in Australia, will see the introduction of a range of exciting new snow play products in the coming years including a tubing carousel, skating rink with bumper cars, kids snowmobiles and a miniature enchanted village.

The commonality among all these planned features are, of course, their artificial nature and lack of actual physical activity required to participate. In fact, this dystopian future sounds more like a Disneyland comes to the alpine experience than it does a real authentic experience where people connect with their environment and use their bodies in a healthy way. This is increasingly the style and practice in Australia – the worlds greatest nanny state where the health and safety bureaucrats have the backing of the increasingly timid bed-wetter population – nature and adventure either off-limits completely (see the Arapilies climbing bans) or tamed to become an experience that encompasses no adventure or challenge whatsoever. There is a small and nascent movement against the over-engineering of the outdoor environment but the broader societal influences towards increasing government reliance are broadly outstripping this counter-culture movement. Australia, unfortunately, exists under the tyranny of the “do-gooders.” As C.S. Lewis wrote in 1948:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

But, it’s May and there is no snow at Selwyn, and only a dusting of frost. From the 1600 metre high point on the ridge, Selwyn FT heads south, undulating along a gentle ridge of burnt snowgums, falling down to Nine Mile Creek, then climbing again to pass along the eastern and southern flank of Tabletop Mountain. It’s lovely riding, and a bicycle a fantastic way to travel this country. After 2.5 hours we are at the base of Tabletop Mountain and the broad flat summit a mere 20 minute walk up grassy slopes. To the southwest, at 2062 metres is Mount Jagungal. Not a particularly high mountain, but, from this angle, almost looking like a real mountain not merely a rounded hill.

Leaving the van early in the morning, we had forgotten lunch and our snack bags feel very light. We split half an energy bar and a few nuts, and then walk back down to the bicycles for the ride out. Bicycle travel is even better on the way back and we are back at Three Mile Dam in time for lunch.

Tantangara Mountain

The old argument about trail sharing sites, surfaced on a blog I follow yesterday. It’s a tedious argument and driven only by some kind of fake elitism, and, much like other far left debates, makes zero sense from a logical perspective. It’s really about protecting your own turf from the undeserving interlopers, which is a bit weird coming as it does from the inclusive crowd. But, it spurred me to have a look at AllTrails for Tantangara Mountain because the government topographic maps are all a bit inaccurate.

Earlier versions of the standard topographic map call the 1745 metre high point Tantangara Mountain but have no tracks marked while the later version shows the track from the Snowy Mountains Highway but not from Rocky Plains Campground and leave off any names from the high point labelling the top simply SMA0093. I had to use AI to find out what SMA represents, apparently, Snowy Mountains Authority and it means the map was produced during the planning of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric scheme.

I don’t actually think AllTrails is very useful as almost any trail/route I have ever looked up on the site says something like “very hard, extra severe, you will likely die.” Mount Jagungal, for example, is described as “hard” (even though there is a good trail all the way to the top), has only four reviews and gets three stars (out of five) from most raters. Most real bushwalkers, who will have Mount Jagungal on their tick list lying as it does in the Jagungal Wilderness and being prominent from many locations will scratch their heads at this and wonder what the raters have been smoking or not, as I thought hash was supposed to make you mellow and happy.

But back to Mount Tantangara. The current topographic map (and AllTrails) makes it look like you should park near Black Walters Creek and follow the trail (an old road) east to the top. This works but the problem arises as soon as you try to legally park. One on side of the Snowy Mountains Highway is a chain up area. I’m not aware of any laws about parking in chain up bays (nor is AI) but it does not seem like a good idea as you could get a ticket. On the other side of the road is a gravel pull-out, ideal for parking except for the sign banning parking.  The better option, is to park down at Rocky Plains area, either at Sawyers Hut or near the campground and follow the track – not marked on any map or AllTrails north to join the track from the Snowy Mountains Highway. The starting elevation is roughly the same but the walk is about 2 kilometres shorter.

It’s a very pleasant walk. We saw some feral horses down near Black Walters Creek, despite heavy culls they are everywhere. The entire walk is easy and scenic owing to burnt forest and the ridge line track. From the top, we used a compass to locate our next couple of destinations: Tabletop Mountain and Mount Jagungal, and also Mount Morgan which we had completed the day before. Mount Jagungal looks like a real mountain from this location and will pique any peak-baggers interest, unless, of course, you read AllTrails and then you would simply shrug, turn over, and go back to sleep.

Mount Morgan

In keeping with our penchant to always go the longest way self powered to avoid as much driving as possible, we were planning to hike up Mount Morgan from the north instead of the much shorter and more popular southern route. The day trip would be in excess of 30 kilometres so we were hoping for a drier weather day. I had woken early the day before to drizzle and low cloud so we had delayed a day. In the middle of the drizzly day, when the weather lifted a little, Doug had walked into the Oldfields Hut to see what the trail was like for cycling, while I had picked up a track that took me from Old Snowy Campground down to Tantangara Reservoir.

Up in the dark again the next morning, the weather was really no better with low cloud and drizzle but we decided to head off to the Oldfields Hut and assess conditions again. We cycled out from Old Snowy Campground at 7 am. Doug pushed his bike up the steep hill on Murray Gap FT to the saddle on the Gurrangorambla Range and plunged down the even steeper east side while I stashed my bicycle in the bush and walked. We met at the Oldfields Hut where it was damp and chilly. Deciding to meet again in two hours, Doug pedalled away while I walked along the FT into a biting wind.

Doug had a cold and damp 25 minute wait at the saddle where the track to Mount Murray leaves the FT but I did manage to arrive with about 20 minutes to spare from the two hour mark. The footpad to Mount Morgan is actually a very good trail all the way to about 1810 metres where it meets the north ridge. From there, the track is fainter as it bypasses some boulders on east side of Mount Morgan. The trees up here had been coated with long icicles which were dripping off as the day warmed. We scrambled up the slippery summit boulders in dense fog, snapped a picture or two and then retreated to the ridge and a slightly sheltered spot for a bit of food.

On the way down, we popped under the clouds and had some misty views of the Bimberi Range to the east and by the time I had walked back to Oldfields Hut, I could even see the tops of Bimberi Peak and Mount Murray. Doug beat me back to the Floatel by 1.5 hours!

Cave Creek

I feel a strange exhilaration riding my bicycle along Pockets Saddle FT in the falling rain. Doug has gone on ahead, while I cycled the extra half a kilometre along a side track to Pockets Hut. I am within six kilometres of Old Snowy Campground which makes the rain less of a problem. I’ll be back in the Floatel within an hour even if I am drenching wet. My legs are getting stiff from the cold, but with a goretex jacket and heavy toque (beanie) on, I am only a little chilled, not really cold.

A couple of hours earlier we had been walking east along Cave Creek towards Cooleman Falls. The track crosses the creek nine times and, while Doug had determinedly kept his shoes on almost the entire way, I had taken mine off and walked bare foot between creek crossings. Clark Gorge is a short, two kilometre canyon with limestone walls. About a kilometre before Cooleman Falls, the canyon opens out to a pretty river running beside eucalpytus forest lined banks.

On our way back from the falls to the campground, the rain started. Big heavy drops driven on the sound of thunder. We detoured up to the campground hoping to find a picnic shelter, but the only roof in the area was protecting the interpretive signage. After sheltering here for about 10 minutes, with thunder rumbling all around, the rain had stopped so we walked back down the Blue Waterholes FT to retrieve our bicycles. We had been going to walk the circuit loop around Nichols Gorge, a drier and smaller version of Clarke Gorge but the persistent thunder and threatening rain was a deterrent.

Instead of the whole loop walk we wandered up to Cooleman Cave where we walked through three of the chambers that did not require crawling through wet mud! Back at the bicycles, we started riding just as the rain started again. All the way back I felt as if I was being chased by Thor as the thunder rumbled on.

The Old Pull-Over

I’m always happy when I get to read something of Andy Kirkpatrick’s; he is incisive, original, fearless, and, most importantly, has a very advanced bullshit detector. It’s coincidental that this essay, on outdoor clothing, should come out, a couple of days after Doug and I returned from a trip to the Snowy (but not that snowy) Mountains. Everyday I had worn my old Patagonia insulated pull-over. An extremely simple piece of clothing: a layer of synthetic insulation sewn between two layers of light wind resistant nylon with a quarter zip at the neck. No hood, only one small breast pocket, elastic in the sleeves and bottom, and no sewn baffles. After 20 years, this piece of clothing is still going strong: sure it has a couple of patches and I avoid wearing it unprotected if pushing through trees and brush, but, if you consider both warmth for weight and longevity, this pull-over has beaten the odds.

Doug in his black pull-over

It’s impossible to buy a pull-over like this anymore. Although Patagonia has 95 women's jackets on the site, not one approximates this pull-over. The new way to make jackets is to sew at least several dozen baffles in so that the jacket is criss-crossed with seams and has a certain “puffer jacket” look. Never mind that all those seams allow cold air to leak into the jacket and warm air to leak out. You look sharp, and, apparently, even in the rarefied shopping space of Patagonia (which we used to call Patagucci because every clothing item was so expensive) looking sharp is more important than being functional.

The old sky blue pullover, PC: DB

My current pull-over, like the previous one before, was bought from a Patagonia outlet shop. There were two of these in North America, one in our home town of Nelson, BC, and one in Dillon, Montana. Both extremely unlikely places to find Patagucci outlets and I’m not sure how the outlets came to be in either location. In Nelson, the outlet was downstairs from the main clothing store which sold a variety of brands, and, on occasion, you could score a reasonable jacket or pair of climbing pants at half the regular price. I used to buy all my Goretex (or similar clone) jackets from there as the jackets wore out with great frequency and were expensive to replace. They never fit quite right because the items that went to the outlet store were “failed” Patagucci items. There was always something a little odd about the cut and fit, but not odd enough to put you off buying something that was at least solidly made from quality material.

A Patagucci jacket that never fit quite right,

PC: Bob

The Dillon outlet was much better than the Nelson one, despite the town being a third of the size. Dillon is home to the University of Montana Western and as such had a lot of young people amongst its small population. The outlet was always hopping and, in addition to having racks and racks and racks of clothing, at least 50% off again from the Canadian price (most things in the USA are 50% of the Canadian price which is why the USA has a more robust economy), the outlet did mail order so that while you were browsing the racks, the store attendants would be walking about the store gathering up items to ship off to far away locales. I’ve still got a pair of shorts and a tank top from the Dillon store, in addition to my pull-over.

Decked out in Patagucci outlet gear at EPC,

PC: DB

I got my first pull-over from the Nelson store – a sky blue one that was subsequently ripped apart on backcountry ski adventures in the Selkirk mountains – and my second, current model, from Dillon. When we were in Canada in 2019, I searched all the outdoor stores for a replacement pull-over for Doug whose black pull-over had worn threadbare but was absent all the rips that mine had accumulated. I could not find anything even close, and the prices were exorbitant. MEC was in the death throes of its eventual financial collapse at the time – driven, of course, by DEI and ESG and marketing executives fresh out of graduate school who did not know a tricam from an ice-screw – and jackets (there were no pull-overs) were upwards of $500 each. Marketing is expensive and the money to fund marketing must come from somewhere.

The toque (aka beanie) also from the outlet shop,

PC: DB

These days, I buy my outdoor clothing (with the exception of rain jackets) from Aldi (centre-aisle) or K-Mart. The items cost under $30 (although disturbingly, these are likely made in some off-shore sweat shop, but so are the more expensive models) and no worse and very often better than a name brand like Kathmandu. There’s a persistent myth in the outdoor space that high tech, high cost gear is needed for every adventure from a two hour trail run to a multi-day ski trip. It’s a myth as old as time. Pre-social media days, people would buy their high tech gear to wear to the local coffee shop, these days, the high-tech gear is more likely to appear in the latest carefully staged social media post. But it’s not gear that gets shit done outdoors, it’s guts and grit, and perseverance and the ability to tolerate discomfort if not outright pain. None of these can be bought off the rack at a shop but must be earned in the daily battle against inertia.

Mount Gladstone

Rising just over 100 metres above the surrounding plains, Mount Gladstone is better called Gladstone Hill, but that might belie how many times I had to get off the bike and push part of the up-track. The uphill section on Franks Loop was ride-able, but I had to get off and manhandle the bike a half dozen times on Longview, which I might rename “huck a lung.” It’s not overly steep; from base to summit, the elevation gain is only 175 metres, but the steep bits are very rocky and given my base level of skill, which is pretty much bump across while trying not to pedal strike or get bumped off, I had to push the bike more than normal (normal on my home trails is never!).

There are a couple of look-outs at the top, and nice views across the nearby flat farming land. There are no green trails off the summit, but the blue trail we rode (Gladiator) was not really technical and an easy ride. One of those times, however, when you get to the bottom shockingly fast and then have to confront the lung and leg blasting effort to get back to the top.

We did not go back to the top but lapped around Franks Loop and Easy Peasy, a green loop on the eastern flanks. If I did ride up again, I think I would throw ethics and aesthetics out and simply ride the sealed Mount Gladstone Road back to the top.