Bimberi Attempt

During a rogaine a week ago, Obi suggested we get the boys together for a winter ascent of Bimberi. Amazingly, we were all available, and after much circular discussion about what style of trip this was (serious or “funny”? lightweight or comfy?) we managed to settle on a start time. I said I didn’t want to carry snow shoes, given that 45 out of the 50 kilometers wouldn’t have any serious snow, so we didn’t end up bringing them.

We set off from Ororral valley at 8am on Saturday and followed the Australian Alps Walking Track over Cotter Gap. Dropping over the gap we got our first sight of Bimberi. This was around three hours into the hike and also about the time I realised we had fully immersed in silly banter, good chats and had left the problems of normal life behind.

There was scattered snow on the ground around 1300m elevation, and it slowly thickened as we got further up, although it had obviously been rained on.

Murray’s gap is usually a bog and the snow started to get deeper here. We got here at 2pm and knew we didn’t have heaps of daylight left. We budgeted 90 mins to get to Bimberi summit, so that we could get back to the gap by dark and walk back to Cotter Flat and set up camp.

We were post-holing up to our knees all the way up the mountain, making incredibly slow progress. After our 90 minutes passed, we were only about halfway up. We got together and chatted about what we wanted to do and it seemed like turning around was the best option.

We made decent time down to Murray’s Gap but the golden light reminded us that we would be soon walking in the dark. We had a mostly silent march back to Cotter Flat, where we set up our camp, got some hot food in and reflected on the trip.

Despite our best efforts beforehand, we hadn’t all gotten on the same page about style (heavy vs light), goals (how important getting to the objective was), or whether we should bring snowshoes (Whilst I didn’t want to carry them, we did regret not having them). Obi commented that we were almost as silly as an Outdoor Ed group. However, despite these issues we all talked positively of the time together.

After a -7 degree night we fought our way into our frozen shoes and socks. We waited for the sun to get into the valley and then set off, completing the remaining 15ks and driving into Tuggeranong for lunch.

I can’t wait for the next time our calendars align so that we can go on another trip together (maybe next year?). Hopefully we will be able to act on our reflection so that the logistics aren’t the hardest part of the trip. But that’s ambitious; logistics are always the hardest part of a trip.