Mount Hotham snow-shoe tour traverses to Dinner Plain
Speed is a secondary consideration on this adventure in the Victorian Alps.
Ask not why the possum crossed the road, but how. “Did you see the tunnel of love?” Glen Clark turns around and asks. The snow-covered ridgetop of Mt Hotham is reflected in his sunglasses. Tight clusters of ski lodges huddle together, perched over chairlifts plunging into black diamond gullies. It’s been the best snow season in years, and on this weekend about 5000 people exploit what feels to be a rare gap between lockdowns to hit the slopes.
I did see the amorous tunnel in question. The thoroughfare under the Great Alpine Road is for critically endangered mountain pygmy possums to spend quality time with their partners on the other side. These cute critters live their entire lives above the snowline and were thought extinct until rediscovered on the mountain in the 1960s. Only a couple of thousand remain, pushed to the brink by climate change and the impacts of feral animals.
Features such as the tunnel can flash by unnoticed when downhill skiing, where the quest for adrenaline often means you overlook the exquisite detail of your environment. I love downhill, but today my senses are being given time to breathe, on a snowshoeing tour that promises immersion in the minutiae of the mountain, and all its varied glory.
We’re walking from Mt Hotham to Dinner Plain, the small ski town with the distinction of being Australian’s only freehold land above the snowline. Clark, the founder of Traverse Hotham, is a cross-country ski instructor and a big fan of life in the slow lane. “Free-ranging it among the snow gums,” is how Clark describes this Villages Traverse tour. The trip includes morning tea and a hot lunch, as well as snowshoe hire. Above average fitness is required. We cover 11km in about five hours, with plenty of rest stops.
“I love taking people on trails less travelled,” he says as we strap on snowshoes under bluebird skies, “or preferably no trails at all.” The recent heavy snow dump has helpfully filled in what in green season would be an impenetrable understorey between the trees, creating a convenient white carpet that invites unhurried rambling.
Snowshoes spread your weight over a larger area, the teeth providing purchase on the snow. It feels a bit like dragging oversized slippers, but you soon adjust (just don’t try walking backwards). On the steeper climbs we pop up a clip to raise our heel and give a better angle of attack on the slope. “Bet you never thought you’d climb a mountain in high heels,” laughs Clark as we ascend one of the ancient volcanic plugs that pockmark the Mt Hotham backcountry.
Two hundred million years ago, when Australia was part of the supercontinent Gondwana, this high plateau was a seabed. When the tectonic plates were pulled in different directions (like a sheet of pastry being stretched until it tears), hot magma was able to rise through the thin crust, forming these mountains. Sixty million years of weathering and erosion then carved the deep gullies that fall dramatically into the Cobungra River to the north and the Dargo Valley to the south.
The legacy of all that volcanic activity is scree slopes littered with basalt boulders, cracked and broken from water freezing in the cracks, then periodically cascading down the hillside. This ramshackle scuttling of boulders has produced the perfect network of tunnels and caves for mountain pygmy possums, and in winter the snow acts as a blanket, keeping the possums warm as they hunker down for winter.
Hiking can sometimes be a plod, but out here it’s just beautiful. The snow gums alone could hold my attention for the entire walk – icicles hanging from branches, snow-encrusted lichen climbing the trunks, their marbled bark in different shades of orange and red. Less heart-warming is the evidence of snow gum dieback, occurring throughout the Australian Alps, with the tell-tale ringbarking of trunks by the longicorn beetle all too common on many skeletal trees.
Our route takes us along the top of Paw Paw Ridge and across the vast expanse of JB Plain, passing an old cattleman’s hut. Another ascent leads to the summit Weeping Rock, where the views stretch along the Razorback Ridge to Mount Feathertop, Victoria’s second highest mountain, and across to the rolling Bogong High Plains. To the southeast the mountains flowing down to the bucolic farmland of East Gippsland.
While we’re taking in the view Clark has been busy with a spade, constructing us an improvised lounge suite in the snow. We enjoy hot venison stew with vegetables, courtesy of Mt Hotham’s First Run Cafe, with sourdough from Harrietville Bakery, apples from Wandiligong and Milawa Cheese – a locally sourced feast.
From our picnic at Weeping Rock we descend to Dinner Plain as Clark tells us stories from the harsh winters of the gold mining days in the early 20th century. The names of many features on Mt Hotham speak to a certain pioneering lifestyle up in these inhospitable mountains, and the comforts sought: Brandy Creek, Whiskey Flat, Rum Gully. We’re more than content calling into the pub at Dinner Plain for a celebratory beer before jumping on the bus back to Mt Hotham for some well-earned pampering.
Mountain Wellness is the only day spa on Hotham and offers a customised treatment for both body and soul. The walking has already done wonders for my soul, but my body could use a spruce up, so I opt for an hour full-body massage with hot rocks. Jodie Coall is a straight-talking master of multiple therapies. “I don’t do fluff or woo woo,” she assures me. “I believe in looking at the whole person and connecting with them. We want to get to know the person in front of us.”
I’m in the capable hands of Bree, who soon has me lying face down in a candle-lit room while she kneads away at tender calves and overworked hip flexors, erasing any residual muscle memory of my five hours clomping in the snow. She brings out smooth, hot granite rocks, collected from a river near Port Douglas, and they seem to warm my muscles back to life, ready for a day on the slopes.
As I’m drifting off into a dreamlike state I hear the most beautiful sound, a syrupy drone ringing out around the room. It gets inside my head and seems to spread through my whole body, massaging me from the inside. The music is Bree running a mallet around the edge of a bronze Himalayan singing bowl, teasing out soulful, rich tones that reverberate endlessly, infusing me with what could only be described as the most powerful, restorative woo woo. For a moment Mt Hotham becomes the Himalayas, and I drift away into my own tunnel of love, blissed out in the backcountry.
In the know
Traverse Hotham runs the Village Traverse from Mt Hotham to Dinner Plain on demand, and also offers shorter snowshoeing tours of both resorts, plus cross-country skiing lessons. From $245 a person.
Mountain Wellness is open seven days a week in Mt Hotham Village. A 75-minute Pekiri treatment includes a foot bath, full body massage, hair mask and treatment and Indigenous-inspired head massage. From $195.
The Victorian government recommends anyone travelling from regional areas to the alps has a negative Covid test in the 72 hours prior to entering resorts.
Ricky French was a guest of Tourism Northeast and Mount Hotham Resort.
