19th of August 2010 - Mt Jagungal Trip Report
 |
||
The cover in August 2010 improved dramatically throughout the month. After doing two multi-day trips in early August, my partner and I headed out for 4 days touring around Valentines and the Kerries. It was a bit too soon after the beginning of the season to have strong snow-bridges, and the Geehi was flowing fast and deep. After playing for a few days, we climbed up onto the Kerries and then used the increasing wind to blow us back to GPS.
 |
||
I had the chance to head out solo for four days from the 16th to the 19th of August. The weather was, characteristically for August 2010, very windy with many embedded fronts moving rapidly across the region.
I headed out from Munyang on the Monday in strong winds, and blizzard conditions above 1600m, passing a few groups on their way up to Schlink Hilton (very busy!), stopped for lunch, then continued on to Mawsons Hut, staying low to avoid most of the wind. Mawsons was in good condition, but the door latch hadn’t been properly engaged a few days before, and spindrift filled the hallway, involving lots of sweeping to try to remove the snow.
Tuesday morning dawned perfect blue skies, and I headed north east and north, crossing the Valentine River (dodgy snow bridge), skied around the headwaters of the Geehi, and climbed the bullet-proof south east spur of Jagungal on foot. Strong winds had stripped most aspects of the mountain back to ice, but left nice snow on the south east aspect. From the summit, I skied the nice snow with another tourer, before climbing up and contouring around and dropping to beautifully restored O’Keefes Hut.
The finish on the hut is immaculate, the re-build only being completed this year, and there are 1930s newspapers lining the walls to give plenty of pre-WW2 era atmosphere. It was still early in the afternoon on a perfect day, and with the weather due to break the next day, I pushed on to Dershkoes Hut. A foursome of heavily over-laden but very friendly tourers arrived from Round Mountain just on sunset, setting up for a pleasant evening of stories round the pot-belly.
 |
||
Next morning looked menacing, and it was time to head south, crossing the Tooma, Geehi, and Valentine Rivers. The Geehi was flowing strongly over knee depth at the ford, and all three involved character-building barefoot wades. Arriving at Valentines for lunch, I decided that with strengthening winds and rain, it was time to enjoy the reading material rather than continuing onwards. Lots of firewood sawing to replace the empty box…
Thursday, up early, across to Schlink (again meeting Dave the snow-shoer who had been there for a week), and down to the power station by lunchtime. Snow cover was marginal on the last few hills, but it was skiable until the 3rd bend down the last hill.
owain.