This new alpine walk crosses Australia’s highest suspension bridge

In the creases beneath Australia’s highest mountain, the Snowy River is bubbling as poetically as its name. Running shallowly over rocks near the start of its 500-kilometre journey to the sea, the river is as clear as the blue sky above – the only dark objects overhead are the ever-present crows that caw and call as we walk.

It’s our first day on the Snowies Alpine Walk, and the Snowy River is our guiding line and companion, leading us away from the ski village of Guthega and towards the wall of mountains that stand taller than any other in Australia.

Guthega to Charlotte Pass trail.

Home to glacial lakes, skeletal snow gums and every Australian mountain higher than 2000 metres, Kosciuszko National Park has long been an irresistible beacon for bushwalkers, but it’s never had a hero multi-day hike – no Overland Track, no Larapinta Trail. Until now.

Launched in December, the Snowies Alpine Walk is a four-day, 56-kilometre hike that provides an all-angles look at the Snowy Mountains, from atop the Main Range to deep beside the Snowy River and deeper still into the Thredbo Valley. It’s not your classic A-to-B linear trail, but instead runs like tentacles around a central loop of the Main Range, intended to deliver hikers each night into one of the park’s ski villages, injecting life into these summer ghost towns.

The trail runs like tentacles around a central loop of the Main Range.

You can hump your gear along the trail, staying at the sections’ ends each night – Charlotte Pass, Perisher, Crackenback – or you can trim your load down to a day pack by basing yourself in a single lodge and using a shuttle service to and from the trail sections each day. This is the option we’ve chosen.

As we stand at the trailhead in Guthega, ready to hike, the tallest mountain of all, Mt Kosciuszko, peeps over the ridge ahead – a siren that will call us forward for much of the first two days. To get us there, we’ll follow the Snowy River, which has its headwaters on the slopes of Kosciuszko. As it flows past us near Guthega, it’s little more than a mountain stream, a limpid brook winding beneath stands of snow gums and slopes of alpine grasses.

Our opening view of Mt Kosciuszko is a fleeting one, with the peak slipping behind other mountains as we descend towards the river, crossing its Farm Creek tributary where, in hardier hiking days, bushwalkers often had to pull themselves across by flying fox. It’s now crossed by a simple steel mesh bridge, and we barely need to change stride as we march on towards isolated Illawong Lodge.

The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service also rents out Creel Lodge and Creel Bay Cottages (pictured) near the shores of Lake Jindabyne.

This first day to Charlotte Pass is short – nine kilometres – and we’re in no hurry. Below the century-old lodge, a thread-thin swing bridge crosses the Snowy River, and we pause beneath it for an early lunch, lying out in the sun on riverside rocks and even stealing a dip that’s as chilly as the river’s name suggests.

The Alpine Walk was five years in construction, piecing together existing trails and 27 kilometres of new track, including the section between Illawong Lodge and Charlotte Pass. It was built with a flourish, incorporating the Alpine Walk’s signature moment – Australia’s highest suspension bridge, straddling Spencers Creek.

Through groves of snow gums – their limbs twisted and crippled by the brutal mountain conditions – and colourful patches of alpine wildflowers, we rise to our day’s end at Charlotte Pass, meeting our shuttle to transfer to the most uncamp-like of hiking camps.

Australia’s highest suspension bridge over Spencers Creek.

Propped at the edge of Smiggin Holes, Numbananga Lodge is one of three lodges operated by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service in the vicinity of the trail. The three-bedroom house has a full kitchen and a deck overlooking the valley and the ridge that separates it from the Thredbo Valley. Rather than rising to stuff a backpack each morning, we can leave the dishes undone and books dog-eared as we walk through the days. It’s rare comfort for a multi-day bushwalk.

The next morning we’re redelivered to Charlotte Pass to begin one of the classic days out in the Australian mountains. The Main Range loop is a long-standing day-walk favourite, climbing to the summit of Mt Kosciuszko as it laps the highest slopes of the Snowy Mountains. And now it’s been absorbed into the Snowies Alpine Walk, forming its longest (22 kilometres) and most spectacular day.

A few hundred metres below Charlotte Pass, as we descend back to the Snowy River, we step out of the snow gums. They’re the last trees we’ll see for hours as we enter the alpine domain of the mountains. The slopes are a dot painting of alpine daisies, and tiny patches of snow linger in the shaded crevices of the mountains.

Main Range loop is a long-standing day-walk favourite.

Midway through the climb onto the Main Range, a short side trail scoots away towards Blue Lake and it’s the one moment that I truly feel as though I’m in the high mountains. So many of the Snowy Mountains’ peaks are stubs, straining to rise above the ridge that connects them, but by the shores of Blue Lake, dark, block-like cliffs provide a rugged counterpoint to the rolling, flower-covered slopes. In winter, it’s the only place in Australia where ice climbing is possible and it’s arguably the Snowies’ most dramatic scene, looking like something from the Alps or Pyrenees.

By the time we rise onto the ridge and the summit of Carruthers Peak, Australia’s ninth-highest mountain, a fierce wind – standard issue up here – is raking over the range and cloud is strung thin across the sky. Mt Kosciuszko rises ahead, but we must work for it, blowing about the trail, with the mainland’s only glacially carved lakes pooled to either side below us.

There’s a magnetism to Mt Kosciuszko (2228 metres) that means hiker numbers build the closer we come to its orbit – it’s the one peak here that everyone wants on their hiking resumé – until soon we’re on its summit, lunching among a few hundred close friends. Around us, hikers scale the stone summit marker, scrambling to be the tallest person in Australia for a moment.

The sense of being crowded is also momentary, with the Snowies Alpine Walk heading into previously little-trodden country over its final two days – nearly 90 per cent of these concluding days is on trails constructed for this hike.

At Blue Lake I finally feel as though I’m in the high mountains.

From Charlotte Pass, it tracks a low ridge to higgledy-piggledy Porcupine Rocks and Perisher Valley before setting out for its finish through areas previously inaccessible to hikers. Above Perisher, the trail steps in and out of alpine clearings and the ghostly remains of dead snow gums, their branches blanched white like bones. Tiny fern gardens appear in the lee of boulders. Combine them with the ever-present patches of flowers and I feel like I’m walking through an alpine botanic garden.

As we cross the ridge and begin the long final descent to the finish at Bullocks Flat, we’re greeted by the biggest of views, looking out over blue waves of mountains as far as Mt Ellery in Victoria’s distant Errinundra National Park, more than 100 kilometres to the south.

The joy of a modern, purpose-built trail is that the descent is well graded, gliding down the slopes, the bush thickening and the views disappearing behind the canopy. Trigger plants replace alpine flowers, and snow gums morph into other eucalypts as birds sing us down the slopes.

We’re no longer up on the tips of the Snowies, or in alpine country, but with the heat rising, there’ll be another chilly swim in the Thredbo River, and a cafe in Crackenback beckons a short walk beyond the finish line. As we hike on past the end, we’re no longer walking for mountains or views, but for reward.

Five more things to do in Kosciuszko National Park

Thermal pool fed by a natural spring at Yarrangobilly Caves, Kosciuszko National Park.Credit: Yarrangobilly Caves and Murray Vanderveer

Yarrangobilly Caves: Head to the park’s north to find six show caves, including wheelchair-accessible Jillabenan Cave, which you can combine with a swim in a 27-degree thermal pool.

Thredbo Valley Track: Mountain bike from Thredbo to Jindabyne beside the beautiful Thredbo River on this 37-kilometre trail. The first section to Crackenback is the easiest; things get more technical beyond there.

Mt Kosciuszko: Take the easiest hiking route to the summit, riding the Kosciuszko Express chairlift most of the way from Thredbo and then strolling boardwalks towards the summit.

Wildbrumby Schnapps Distillery: Forget activities altogether and settle into a tasting at this distillery door outside of Jindabyne. If you must walk, there are more than a dozen sculptures to wander among across the property.

Waterfalls: Go chasing waterfalls on walking trails through Clarke Gorge and to Landers Falls, Budong Falls and the Waterfall Walk near Jindabyne.

The details

Hike
Hikers require a park pass for Kosciuszko National Park. These can be purchased at the Snowy Region Visitor Centre in Jindabyne, the Khancoban Visitor Centre or on the NSW National Parks and Wildlife website. The Snowies Alpine Walk is slated as a four-day hike, but each stage can also be walked as a standalone day walk.

Fly
The closest major airport to Kosciuszko National Park is Canberra, a two-hour drive to Jindabyne.

Stay
Numbananga Lodge, which costs from $586 a night, is 10 kilometres from Charlotte Pass, where three of the four Snowies Alpine Walk stages either start or finish. The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service also rents out Creel Lodge and Creel Bay Cottages near the shores of Lake Jindabyne. See nationalparks.nsw.gov.au

Shuttle
Snowlink runs shuttles, including luggage transfers, to and from the trailheads, as well as transfers from Canberra airport. See snowlinkshuttle.com.au

More
nationalparks.nsw.gov.au

The writer hiked courtesy of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.