Location - The Victorian Alps, AustraliaDistance - About 40 kms return - you can easily make this longer or shorter. Terrain - Mountain bike trails - not suitable for road bikes.
Difficulty - Moderately difficult, especially if you return via the Bogong High Plains Rd.
Highlights - The lovely scenery along the aqueducts combined with a sense of total isolation.
Map and Info - click here Falls Creek
We are fairly sure we are the only guests in our hotel at Falls Creek, Victoria. Yesterday soap bubbles drifted off the roof all morning - a film crew was in residence making a promo. I suppose it was meant to be snow. The bubbles stopped today so we think the film makers are gone - and that just leaves us.
The ski season ended a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps the village will come alive when the weather warms up but for now we have it to ourselves.
We have come for the cycling. The high country around Falls Creek is a cyclist's dream come true. I'm not talking about road-bikers, although the road biking culture is well and truly alive, neither am I talking about downhill mountain biking complete with body armour and death-wish. I am talking about back-country touring. The kind of cycling which doesn't require a fancy bike or a super-fit rider. This is the kind of riding which David and I, heading into our autumn years and with only a moderate level of fitness, will always say yes to.
Bogong Village
Our plan was to cycle for two days, returning each evening to our nice comfy hotel. Have I mentioned before that we don't do camping? Sadly, the weather was awful yesterday: wet, cold and windy. The temperature struggled to make 10 degrees C and the mountains were blanketed in fog. Have I mentioned before we are fair-weather cyclists? A quick change of plan saw us drive 15 minutes down the mountain to Bogong, a tiny alpine hamlet settled by European migrants who came to Australia by their thousands in the 1950s and 60s to build the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric scheme.
Bogong is nestled beside Lake Guy which is circumnavigated by a track just navigable on mountain bikes. It isn't far - about 4 kms. However getting around the damn wall at one end of the lake proved too much of a challenge so we ended up retracing our steps from almost the end of the track. This turned a 4 km ride into 8 kms along a moderately difficult track. Strictly speaking it is a walking track and more than once we had to get off and push but it is a lovely scenic cycle.
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| The track around Lake Guy - this was the easy bit. |
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| A sign says you might see platypus here - we didn't! |
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| The track deteriorated as we got further around the lake. |
Historic Huts and Aqueducts
Day 2 and the sun has come out.
The Bogong High Plains Rd from Falls Creek to Omeo is closed in winter. There is a period of a couple of weeks each year when the snow has almost gone but the road is not yet open to motor vehicles. Our starting point for the day's ride is the Rocky Valley Storage Dam about 3 kms past Falls Creek where a locked gate means we have the road to ourselves. We slip our bikes under the gate, and head out into the High Country.
There is an 'intentions book' next to an information board on the far side of the dam. I fill in our expected route and time of return. The track we intend to cycle is perfectly safe but we know from experience that there is no phone reception and it is possible to ride all day without meeting another living soul. If we don't return I want the comfort of knowing someone might come looking for us. Last year I sms'd our two adult sons in Sydney at the beginning of the ride. I told them where we were going and gave them instructions to call emergency services if we didn't contact them again in the evening. It turned out that was a total waste of time. They barely know what country we are in most of the time, expecting them to keep track of our safety is a bridge too far. This year I'm putting my faith in the intentions book.
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| This is empty country |
At Langford's Gap we turn off the road and follow the sign toward Cope and Wallace's Hut. This is High Country scenery at its best. The trail follows an aqueduct, running slightly uphill. It is slow going. The ground is boggy in places and there are occasional patches of snow on the hills beside us. The views across the mountains are magnificent.
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| The turn-off to Langford's Gap |
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| The trail follows an aqueduct for most of its length. |
Wallace's HutAbout 3km into the ride we detour to Wallace's Hut. Wallace's Hut is one of many built by drovers who brought their cattle to graze the high country pastures in summer many years ago. It was built in 1889, making it the oldest hut in the National Park. Today the huts provide emergency shelter to cross-country skiers and hikers caught in bad weather. I can't imagine spending the night in one - but if we got caught in a blizzard it would probably feel like a castle.
The trail looks out on thousands of bleached-white gum trees. Victims of bushfires, they re-grow from close to the ground leaving ghost-like trunks guarding the mountains. The scene is surreal and beautiful.
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| Wallace's Hut |
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| Bushfire ravaged gums. |
Rover Chalet and Cope Hut
Back on the main trail about 2km from the turn-off to Wallace's Hut we pass Rover Chalet. It was built in 1940 and was the first ski lodge in the area. Falls Creek wasn't even planned then. Today it sits isolated. Definitely not for the novice skier, you get there in winter by skiing across country from Falls Creek taking what you can carry - and nothing else! It would never work for a notorious over-packer like David.
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| Rover Chalet |
Cope Hut and Langfords West HorseyardsPast Rover Chalet we pass the turn-off to Cope Hut. We have been there before so we decide to push on. If we have time we will detour to it on the way back. If you are curious about what it looks like, it is the hut in the thumbnail photo at the beginning of this post.
Until this point the trail has been well signposted, but beyond here the signs disappear. I am glad we have a detailed contour map. Finally, a few kilometres further on, the trail ends at the Bogong High Plains Rd near the Langfords West Horseyards. These horseyards and others in the High Country were built for the use of horse riders who are allowed to camp in the area during summer.
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| The signs are great where the trails branch off from the road - as you get further into the back-country they disappear. |
Buckety Plains and Faithfuls Hut
Our final objective is Faithful's hut, the turn-off to which is a few kilometres further along the road toward Omeo. Once we leave the road however the track deteriorates quickly so we leave the bikes and continue on foot. Just as we are about to give up we cross a creek and stumble on the hut. Like the other mountain huts it is rustic and very basic but we are pleased to have found it.
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| Faithful's Hut |
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| Inside Faithful's Hut - this is almost luxurious compared to some of the other huts. |
Returning along the Bogong High Plains Rd
After a brief discussion we decide to return the whole way along the road. Although we have several hours of daylight left it is beginning to get quite cold and the overcast sky makes it seem much later than it is. I feel safer returning via the road. In retrospect this was a definite mistake. The trail along the aqueducts was a gradual incline. It would have been a steady downhill almost the whole way back. The road, on the other hand is hilly. Brief exhilarating downhill stretches are paid for many times over by slow torturous climbs. More than once we abandon the effort and walk the last few metres to the top of a hill.
Cruising down the last hill and across the dam to our car we are completely spent. I collapse into the passenger's seat and thank my lucky stars that David, my somewhat old-fashioned husband, always insists on driving after a hard cycle.
Cycling in the High Country - tips and tricks and things to know
- Take plenty of water. The aqueduct water carries a risk of giardia and there is no other water on any of the trails.
- Pack a picnic lunch. There are no shops, cafes or other signs of civilisation.
- Apply sunscreen. It is easy to get burnt in the thin mountain air.
- Make sure you have a spare inner-tube and you know how to change a tyre. It is a long walk home.
- This is back-country, the signage is good until you get to the Cope Hut turn-off, after that you are more or less on your own. Call in at the Information Centre at Mount Beauty on the way to Falls Creek and buy a contour map. The tourist maps you get in Falls Creek are not detailed enough for back-country exploring unless you stick to a few of the better marked trails.
- There is no mobile phone reception. Fill in the intentions book just the other side of the Rocky Valley Storage Dam and let someone know where you intend to go and when you expect to return. Don't just tell your adult children back in Sydney unless they are a lot more reliable than ours - lol.
- The Historic Huts trail along the aqueducts above Falls Creek is, in my view, one of the best cycling trails in the area but there are countless more. You could spend a week or more here and never walk or cycle the same trail twice.
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