Epic hikes: Mt Buller, Australia

A business trip to Australia from the US poses a few problems - not the least of which is the incredibly long flight through the dateline and into the next day.

I was slated to go ahead of the rest of the team to make sure that the lab we had constructed was ready and to do some dry-runs of our demo before the team arrived.  John had also planned to come earlier to get some hiking in before the customer meeting slog started so we co-ordinated our plans so that we would arrive together on the Friday.  Not long after making our bookings we discovered that the Monday was a public holiday in Australia (the Queen's birthday) so it turned out to be an opportunity for three hiking days.

John went over the options with me before we left and we had settled on staying in a town called Bonnie Doone.  The town is close to Mansfield and about two hours North East of Melbourne near an area called the Australian Alps.

Winter in Australia is pretty green and as we drove out on the backroads towards our motel I was struck by how pretty the countryside is.

The road was dotted with ranch-style farm houses and the hills are steep-sided bumps in the landscape which are quite striking (compared to the rolling hills I am used to).

Autumn foliage is sparse but quite striking and the bottoms of the trees have this even line which reminded me of how the goats in Africa eat to their height and no more.

Not long after the start of our journey we felt quite comfortably "at home in the countryside" - John remarking that it didn't feel too alien until we saw a few roadsigns warning us of the local wildlife.

We collapsed into our beds at about 9pm after a total of 24 hours of travel with less than 6 hours of sleep.

The next morning we had some really good coffee at a local gas station and headed for Mt Buller, the site of the best skiing in Australia.  The season is short but the mountain is equipped with a snow making machines and two ski lifts.  Our trip coincided nicely with the beginning of the ski season.

As usual I didn't give a huge amount of attention to the plans for the hikes.  An Australian at the demo lab site told us not to expect too much in terms of height.  The mountains are modest by Colorado and European standards but turned out to be around the height of the mountains we are familiar with in New Hampshire.

Mt Buller is a respectable 1805 m (5922ft) high and the trail that John had chosen led us from a parking lot about 2 mi from the main entrance to Buller up a jeep road and then up a path over the top.

Within a few minutes John pointed out some movement in the bush just in time for me to see the second of two kangaroos vanish off the path.  Wallabies look like kangaroos but are darker and smaller and are more common.  Though these looked pretty big to me, they could have been wallabies.

The jeep trail took us past some signs warning of poison put out for wild dogs (so be aware that your domestic animal is at risk) and into a light drizzle which didn't deter us.  As John pointed out at least a couple of times in the following days:  "We've come too far to turn around now...."

The trees are pretty spectacular - without knowing how to identify them we were content to marvel at how they shed their bark and how much of the area showed evidence of fire.  I remember from South Africa how the acacia trees set the environment for fire and embrace fire as part of their propagation.

As far as I know wildfire is a real problem in parts of Australia but we saw at least one sign that suggested that controlled burns are part of the conservation plan for the forests areas.

We missed the turn off the jeep trail by about a mile and had to retrace our steps before getting onto the path to the summit.

Unfortunately the mountain was socked in but it didn't take long before we were treated to some spectactular views of the near distance - evidence that the ridge of this mountain must be amazing on a clear day.

As we got into the alpine zone of the mountain the rime glinted on the grass and trees and the temperature dropped.  We had started hiking at -2C (28F) and my hands were pretty cold to the point of some numbness for much of the time we were near the summit.

As we approached the rocky ledges that mark the last push to the summit is started to snow quite hard.  The snow (more like little balls of ice) was stinging our faces in the wind.  At the time I didn't worry too much about it - taking care as we climbed up short steep sections that on any day would have given me pause.

Once we had climbed onto the the West ridge the path became less distinct.

As we reached the top we noticed signs with dire warnings (conveniently placed for people walking in the other direction). By this time the snow was pelting down and there was no trail to be seen.

I found myself wondering about the accuracy of the GPS as we were following the track.  I remembered Jeff's account of our trip up Mt Katahdin when his parents followed the GPS reports of our location and saw us go over a precipice a few times in the night because the GPS was 20-50ft off in places.  With no clear marked trail heading down how easily could we be misled towards a precipice ourselves?

Good fortune or a consistently good reading on the GPS led us safely down the other side with the temperature quickly rising to a point where we were walking in a fine drizzle and then in overcast cool conditions.

We soon reached the road at the entrance to Mt Buller and Mt Stirling and walked the mile and a half back to parking lot (always a long slog at the end of the day) with a 23km distance (14mi) on the GPS-track log for the day.

We stopped in Mansfield for a really good dinner and well-earned beer.  Day two loomed ahead - a 20km (12mi) hike up Mt Feathertop.

More photographs here.

Mnt Isolation #48

The 4000 footer club has been around since 1957 and supports a membership who have all climbed the 48 4000 foot high peaks in the White Mountains.

The club also maintains lists of people who climb all the 4000 footers in New England (67 of them) and those who have done more constrained summits - for example doing them all in Winter.  There are other more stringent conditions that people impose on themselves (usually after completing their first 48) for example: doing them in a specific order (either by elevation or alphabetically); summiting on a moonlit night; climbing each summit four times starting from the East, West, North and then South; doing them all in one season; and summiting each in a different month of the year (17 climbers claimed this achievement in 2011).  We have heard about someone who was driven from hike to hike and ran them all consecutively.  It turns out that his record of 3 days, 17 hours and 21min set in August 2002 was beaten by another hiker (a photographer from Vermont) by almost 2 hours in 2003.  The link (to his spreadsheet of times and summits) has great descriptions of the hike in one of the columns.  Very impressive!

Isolation is the last of my 4000 foot hikes.  Although I did a few of them in 2008, my enthusiasm was only really piqued in 2011 after it became somewhat of a tradition to hike with my colleagues Bruce and John and take on some weighty work-related topics in what we started calling "summits" - many of which were short hikes up Monadnock in New Hampshire through 2010.

I did some of the summits twice over these years so in effect have hiked 54 4000 foot peaks since 2007 when my sons Matt and Nick did Kinsman with me.

Our work-related "summits" continued all the way through 2010 leading up to our small start-up company being acquired at the end of that year and continued into the subsequent years when I was encouraged to take on multi-summit hikes like the Pemi loop with John which we repeated in 2012 with Bruce.  The hardest of all the 4000 foot multi-summit hikes was the one-day Presidential Traverse in 2013 which is without doubt my most impressive hiking accomplishment to date.

Mnt Isolation (4,003ft) barely makes the grade but is one of the two hikes that are often done last (Owl's Head is the other) because they are both fairly inaccessible.  Isolation is a 12mi round trip which involves climbing over a mountain to get to it and Owl's Head is an 18mile round trip.  Thankfully we included Owl's Head in our second Pemi loop.

We had arranged to meet up for breakfast at a railway-themed restaurant called Glen Junction near North Conway.  Nick and Matt both wanted to join me (as did one of their friends) on my last 4000 foot hike but Nick is off on an adventure traveling around the US and their friend works during the week so it was Matt who joined me for the trip up to New Hampshire.  We had a room in the same hotel that we had stayed in on the night before our Presidential Traverse last year.

Our breakfast was hearty - the topic of sausage links usually comes up (I still can't get used to the idea that a sausage can be a patty after all these years) and after some good food we made it to the trail-head at 8:20.

As usual I hadn't paid too much attention to John's description of the trip which had us hike up to Glen Boulder and then on to Isolation.  John pointed out that the most direct trail to Isolation is less interesting than the one past Glen Boulder which promises great views.

Hiking up the Glen Boulder trail was strenuous but nothing like the Mnt Adams hike we did a couple of weeks before and we made good time up the long and fairly steep incline.  I suppose when we came into the area that warned of alpine shrubs it should have occurred to me that we were pretty high up but it was only when we were standing at the junction of the trail above the boulder ready for a descent that I asked John which of the mountains was Isolation.

He pointed down past a long line of cairns on a relatively even mountainside to one of the foothills far below.

We had, it turned out, hiked a path that led to 5100ft before descending down to the 4003ft summit we were after.

The trail after this was long but relatively easy going.  For such an isolated summit we saw quite a bit of traffic - at least 5 or 6 different parties including two separate hikers who were doing their 45th hike of the 48.

The path to the actual summit of Isolation is a junction off the trail and up some rather steep rocks and on to an open area with great views.

Sitting on the last summit on my list was a very satisfying experience.  I pointed out that all we had to do now was to make it out alive....

The trail back was a steady downward gradient for close to 7 miles, much of which was water-logged and muddy.  

Some of the trail passed close to a stream which had some pretty rapids.

The sustained downhill began to take its toll on our knees, legs and feet.  I became convinced that I had a pebble in my shoe but didn't find a good place to stop until we reached a river crossing at least 30 minutes later.

Small stones in your shoe are annoying.  Usually the best way to tell that it is a stone (and not a blister) is to stop and kick your toes into the ground to try to loosen the stone but after you have battered your feet for 10 miles you are not inclined to want to kick anything.

I stopped at a river crossing and took off my shoe only to find that it was indeed a blister hurting the ball of my foot and there was nothing for it but to walk on.  Sitting with my leg bent to tie my laces induced a painful cramp in one of the small muscles in my thigh which was only relieved by straightening my leg and, although it never turned into a crippling cramp, I felt the after-effects of it for some time down the trail after I had managed to tighten my laces standing up.

As usual, Bruce had far more energy than John or I had but he patiently hiked behind all of us (he claimed that I had instructed him to do that the day before).  Matt is in good shape and was frequently making his way up ahead of us and having to stop and wait for us.

I have had several photos taken of me on these hikes and I always joke that I should pull in my belly when the photograph is taken (which I always do).  Sadly it is evident now that this is pointless.  That belly will not be contained. 

Fairly close to the end of our hike we came across a message on one of the rocks.  A good directive for a healthy outdoors experience.

The sound of traffic on the road comes a few minutes before you reach the car-park and is always a good sound to hear, as is the comment by John that we "have cheated death once more...."

John had bought some 4000 footer IPA which I'd put into a cooler box full of ice the night before in my car trunk and it made a very refreshing way to celebrate this milestone.

We did talk about what's next.  This was before I saw the list of 4000 footers in Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts which I suppose we need to consider.  For the immediate future though, there are some lesser, more leisurely peaks that we haven't done that would be a nice option for "summit" meetings.

Mnt Adams - direct

Mount Adams is one of the 9 mountains that you will hike over if you ever do the Presidential Traverse.

John, Bruce and I did this long traverse almost exactly one year ago (7/13/2013) -  a grueling 15-hour hike over almost 18miles.  This week we decided to hike up Adams, the second mountain on the traverse, as a filler hike while I wait for a good window to do my last 4000 footer (Mnt Isolation) with my sons.

We met at Einstein Bros. for breakfast as usual and were at the trailhead by 9:20am for the start.  The hike John had chosen (the Airline trail) is 9 miles long and goes to a height of 5793 ft.

As we were making our way up, I was holding forth in a discussion about how SNMP lost favor in the world of device configuration when a couple emerged over a large rock on their way down.  The man had a big smile on his face and said, boldly in Afrikaans:  "Ek kan nie Afrikaans praat nie" (I can't speak Afrikaans) followed immediately by "Gaan kak in die mielies" (Go and shit in the corn).

We both laughed at this bizarre exchange - someone had clearly taught him a quaint insult in Afrikaans when he visited there some years back and he took great relish in telling me where to take my ablutions.

After the somewhat unrelenting ascent through the forest we arrived at the sign that warns of alpine conditions.  A friendly "STOP" greets you as you reach this height.

This area has the worst weather in America

Many have died here from exposure even in the 

Summer.  Turn back NOW if the weather is bad

Not long after this we reached the ridge that is an attraction of the Airline trail.  The trees become shorter and eventually you are hiking over a boulder strewn ridge with beautiful vistas in both directions.

Two French-speaking girls were ascending at around the same speed we were - and we were making fairly heavy going of it, though Bruce was characteristically blessed with a lot more energy and speed than either John or I could muster.

The Airline trail follows a ridge that offers some spectacular views...

including Madison and the Madison hut where we had had morning coffee when we did the traverse a year ago.

Once we reached the ridge the hiking was fairly even until a junction which leads up the boulder field that makes up Mnt Adams itself.

The going up this slope was really tough.  I commented that the boulder field on Adams and Madison looked like the tops of the mountains had been bombed - a variety of boulder sizes strewn all over the slopes with very little even ground to walk on.  The going was also steep and we needed to stop a few times for breathers before summiting at around 1pm - a good hour later than we had originally expected.

At the summit we met two other people who recognized my accent which has to be a record (I don't think this has happened 3 times in a day to me since I moved to America - let alone on any mountain).

A couple who had visited South Africa and had been able to hike the Otter Trail within a few weeks of arriving there (who gets on the Otter Trail without booking a year in advance?) and a young hiker who knew people from Port Elizabeth.

The day was beautiful and we had a clear view of Mnt Washington with the road that cars drive up on the far left of the picture.

We decided to visit the Madison hut on the way down - a 0.2mile extension to the hike - for some of their lemonade ...

and ended the hike fairly exhausted at 5pm - having taken 8 hours to do what the books suggests is a 6.5 hour hike.

My legs and feet were in fair agony as we approached the end and even though there were some enticing signs for short detours to see waterfalls I voted to keep on the trail instead so that we could enjoy the bliss of taking off our boots and sitting in the car for the ride home.

Mnt Hancock (North and South)

Another early start to my second-last trip of the 48 4000 footers.  This time to do a "lollipop" loop that covers both of the Hancock mountains.

We met at Einstein Bros. in Concord - this time joined by a colleague who hadn't hiked a 4000 footer before.

I ordered the salmon and creme cheese bagel - like the last time I was in favor of avoiding a greasy breakfast - and ordered a chicken salad sandwich for lunch on the mountain.

Bruce did this hike alone when he did his 4000 footers and had recorded a (impressive, as it turned out) time of 4 hrs 15 min.

The trailhead is on one end of a hairpin bend on the Kancamagus Highway and involves crossing the highway in order to start.

The path up to the first junction in the trail is a very long even path which seems to go on forever (about 40 min) before turning off to the left onto the trail "proper".  The route that we took crossed a stream a few times with newer sections of the trail that skirt around the bends in the stream to reduce the number of crossings.  I suspect that these trails were cut during a period of high water and not knowing any better we took these side trails on the way up.

A steady ascent with a fairly even gradient brought us to the second junction in the trail which is where the loop around the two peaks begins.  We chose to go counter clockwise which meant going up South Peak first.

At this point the trail gets steeper - although still at a fairly even gradient that resembles more climbing steps than the high stepping and scrambling that is common to many of the 4000 footer trails.  Being his first 4000 foot hike, Jeff needed to experiment with his pace and reminded me of my earlier hikes with a few forced stops to catch his breath on the way up.

The trail up doesn't really offer many views but on each of the summits there is an outlook that offers great views to the South West and South.

The weather was perfect for hiking with temperatures in the high 60's in the valley and in the mid 40's on the peak.    South Hancock is 4,319 ft.

The ridge trail was a really easy walk and while the elevation gain between the two is enough to make them both qualify as 4000 footers, it was mostly a gentle hike up to some steep scrambling near the North summit (4,403 feet).

The overlook at the North Peak was pretty busy and fairly eventful.

While we were sitting there a hiker arrived with blood streaming down his leg.  We asked him if he'd met a rock on the way up and he held out his left hand which was pretty swollen with a somewhat twisted baby finger.  He said that he had been running up the trail and had fallen. After refusing pain killers he let us know that he was going to go on to South Hancock before heading back home.

After he left, one of the hikers offered food in her hand to the Grey Jays that were hanging about and one of them ate from her hand!

The walk down was uneventful aside from discovering that Jeff on his first 4000 footer had managed to drink three litres of water - emptying his supply.  I dubbed him the human sponge after looking at my water and seeing that I had drunk less than half a litre.

We realized that the trail down the North peak was pretty steep - covering some portion of a slide - and is probably the better way to ascend (we made a mental note of this for next time).

After the junction at the bottom of the summit loop I paused at some of the river crossings that we had missed on the way up and took photographs of the water.

Including the crew crossing....

and a few horizontal ledges.

We got back to the parking lot at 3:30 after 6 and a half hours of hiking - 15 min over book time.  This time it was me who pronounced that "we had cheated death once again".

Mnt Hale

Another 4000 foot mountain under the belt - this time including a lively discussion about capacity management and vertical scale of our software "stack".

We met as usual for breakfast at the Einstein Bros bagel shop in Concord.  I have learned form experience that the Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts en route to Concord are all closed near 5am so I usually skip breakfast and coffee in anticipation of breakfast after the 90min drive.

Breakfast at a bagel shop is a little tricky because you can easily end up with something that is pretty greasy on the bagel.  At 7am there is some danger that a greasy meal may not agree with the rest of your day.  I was musing about whether I was up for this when I noticed a menu item for smoked Salmon and cream cheese.  With a little trimming I was able to order the simplest configuration ("yes, just the salmon and the cream cheese, that's all") and combine it with a dark roast coffee just before Bruce and John arrived.

Mt Hale is the 4th last hike in my list of 4000 footers.  It is, like Tecumseh, a hair over 4000ft (4055ft) with a relatively short hike to the summit of 2.2mi.  The trailhead is off Zealand Rd and the summit is north of the mountains that we climbed when we did the Pemi loop in 2012.

The weather forecast for the day was mild with a fairly high chance of rain after 2pm.  Given how short this hike is and with a start of 10:40am we expected to be done well before 2.

Early on in the hike we crossed a small stream with some short rapids that were flowing pretty well at this time of year.

The gradient is pretty constant and the hike is described as the easiest of all of the 4000 footers and notably doesn't have the chunky scramble over high rocks near the summit that is so typical of the 4000 footers.

At one point we were able to see somewhat of a view from the path but in general this is not a hike that offers much of a view.  Even at the summit, which has a fairly large cairn on it, the view was of the trees surrounding us.

We met a few other hikers - in particular a group who were going on to hike Zealand after Hale.  They had already resigned themselves to the weather and surprisingly reported that they had rarely hiked up in New Hampshire without getting wet....  John must lead a charmed life because the exact opposite has been true of all of our trips - he usually checks the weather beforehand!  We have narrowly escaped getting wet by arriving at the car just as the rain started on two occasions - this being the second of them.

I think that this was the first of our hikes that didn't end with John saying:  "Well we cheated death once again...."

We must be getting better at it.

Mnt Tecumseh

A feature of working for a start-up is that there is more than the usual freedom around work allocation.  A couple of my colleagues and I use this to combine our two favorite activities:  pontificating and hiking.  Often when there is a hard problem to solve in our software product we head for the hills for a morning (or sometimes a day) and hike.

The walk usually starts with a certain amount of grumbling about the problem at hand - followed by a gradual breakdown of the problem.  Of course our level of fitness and the level of complexity of the problem are variables that might result in less talking and more thinking or visa versa.  At the end of it though there is usually an array of ideas on what to do and sometimes even a fairly detailed plan of attack.

Our current topic of conversation revolves around modeling things in the virtual computer world and there have been numbers of hours spent both in the office and on the trail going over various aspects of this.

Today's design summit involved one of the easiest of the 4000 foot mountains (Tecumseh) which is a hair over the minimum height at 4003 ft.

The hike starts in the parking lot at the Waterville Valley ski resort and has a remarkably constant gradient for about 80% of the way.

There are not many views on the way up - the hike barrels through the trees until really close to the top where there are some gaps in the trees that offer views of the White Mountains.

The round trip "book time" is 3 hrs 30min and we were well within that at the summit after 90min of walking.  The steady gradient does give a feeling of never-ending walking after about 60% up the trail and given that this was the first hike of the year for me (my conditioning could be better - another feature of a start-up!) which did make the hike fairly strenuous for me - though nothing like some of the other hikes from last year!

So this is the first 4000ft of the year - with only four more to go to complete all of the 48 4000foot mountains in New Hampshire (two of which will be done in one trip)!

Total hiking time was 2hrs 45min.

Mnt Moriah

This hike came quickly on the heels of the last trip.  It brings the count up to 43.

It is one of the perks of my job that we occasionally take to the hills to catch up on work plans and to figure out strategies to solve new problems that our software is designed for.  This has been something that we have done since we worked together at a previous company and the decision to go on a trip can sometimes be at short notice (in this case the day before).

We usually start in on the work-related topics after breakfast during the drive from Einstein Bros.  (we met at 6:30am this time) and keep at it till we become breathless three quarters of the way up.  Sometimes the work conversations begin again when we are making our way down or are in the car on the way back.

The trailhead for Moriah (4049ft) starts near Gorham, NH.  This is the small town where John and I started the 30 mile section of the AT hike into Mahoosuc Notch in September.

The hike has a relatively easy initial ascent up to a mountain called Mnt Surprise (at about 2192ft).  This first section is a 2 mile stretch and brings you to pretty spectacular views of the town in the background and the Presidential mountains.

The remainder of the hike is described as easy hiking in 4000footers.com:

"The trail is relatively easy, compared to other NH 4,000 footer mountains, but, it can be very dangerous when wet, because a big portion of the Carter-Moriah trail is solid rock. (very slippery when wet, or icy!)"

Compared to last week when the temperature up on the mountain was in the upper 20s, the temperature today started at 27F (-3C) but increased to a balmy 47F (8C) by the time we were done.

There was snow on the ground and ice on the rock as we started up the very slabby 2.5 mile section to the top of Moriah.

Bruce was in Hawaii last week and had a planning lapse... he hadn't thought to bring his micro-spikes.  Despite this,  he and John navigated the slabs with astonishing skill.  Pretty soon I found myself lagging behind them because I kept slipping and sliding.  I gave in and and pulled my micro-spikes on so that I could keep up with them.

As we neared the top, the ice covered trees were testament to some recent pretty hard wind and icy rain up there.

We stopped to add a layer before summiting and enjoying the spectacular view from there.

We had come across a couple of hikers a short way from the summit in a somewhat more sheltered spot.  They had just arrived there and told us that they had seen some pretty impressive bear tracks in the snow not too far from where we were.

We made our way back down to sheltered spot near the summit to stop for lunch.

The slightly warmer weather and adding layers before getting cold had ensured that I arrived there warm but I pulled on my mittens as we ate because the air was cold.

A bird arrived at the lunch party, somewhat emboldened by the fact that we had food.  I had never seen a bird of this type before.  It looked like a bluejay without the peak on its head and with a dark head.

Bruce threw a small piece of bagel down for it and it came really close to get the food.

It turns out that it is a Grey Jay which has a range all along the North (Alaska, Canada, North America).

I found the second part of the ascent very tiring.  My legs were a little rubbery when we got there and I felt it going down too.

Stopping for lunch had allowed the cold to set in - the tip of my one finger was starting to go numb - but it didn't take long for us to warm up again as we went down and up over the relatively flat section from the peak to Mount Surprise.

The descent down the icy slabs was an exercise in care.  The micro-spikes gave us a huge advantage over Bruce but he only slipped once.

We were back at the car at 4:30pm - before dark.