Keep Canberra Boring

This was one of my favorite weekends last year. Tired of the drudgery that comes with half a semester of university, Nick, Ben, Lachy, Henry and I set off to conquer the highest peak in the ACT, Mt Bimberi. Sitting at 1912 metres high, we took three days to complete the return journey. Bimberi Peak sits right at the border of NSW and ACT on the western side of the territory. The NSW portion belongs to the Kosciuszko National Park and the ACT section belongs to Namadgi National Park. Climbing this mountain doesn’t require any specialized equipment or knowledge, just a set of legs.

Like a lot of our trips, Ben’s Subaru Outback was the go to mode of transport to the trail.

Straight into the thick of things, Lachy exhibited the grace of a swan crossing this stream. All four of us did manage to have a splash free start to the trip.

Lunch! Relatively early into the journey, it was still all smiles.

Nearing the end of day one, Nick did some dance walking to keep the spirits up.

Made it! The Cotter Hut sits alongside the Cotter river at the Base of the ridge that Bimberi occupies. Sadly for us camping out here isn’t luxury, and the hut is only for the Rangers. Nice to look at but that’s about all it could offer us.

By mid April it is cold out here at night, once the sun sets, it hits. Luckily man discovered fire.

Ben chows down under the light of his home made torch.

The three tents are dwarfed by the hut here on the morning of day two. An amazing still day with no clouds in sight.

After about 500 vertical metres, we reached Murray’s Gap, the base of Bimberi. This is covered in snow for months of the year, and was soggy as it gets underfoot in places. The clouds had turned up at this point.

The hard work was getting to us…

Well some of us, Lachy seemed to have a stash of positive energy in his back pocket.

…Which he was sharing with Ben.

There’s no actual route to the summit, a mixture of dumb luck and bush bashing provided a negotiable path.

Once we got to the top the view was pretty amazing, the water there is the Corin Dam.

Unfortunately for us the wind at 1912 metres was unbearable. We had climbed around 1000 of those this day and were exhausted. We just kinda hid behind some rocks and ate what we had and complained about the wind. It was almost anticlimactic to just huddle around and shelter ourselves from the elements. Ben brought the most clothing to the top, and jealousy was running rampant.

The descent was just as rough as the ascent, but when we reached camp again, we had some visitors. Nick seemed to be extremely excited about it, as is shown here. It’s worth mentioning that Nick found that hat on the climb, score.

At the end of the day we braved the Cotter river to wash our feet. It was icy and I think I lasted about 10 seconds before I’d had enough.

Nick had a friend round for dinner on the final night and soon after we all hit the hay extremely heavily.

Daybreak on the final day and it was pouring rain. Great. We packed up our belongings, I put my camera away and we struggled home.

We got home soaked from head to toe, but it was worth it. I’d like to go back one day but via a different route, maybe even riding out to the hut would be a good one nighter. These photos were taken with my iPhone 4s and jump through to Flickr.