Sunday 24/07/2022 Cascade Trail Car Park – Cascade Trail – Thredbo River – Boggy Plain – Teddys Hut – Wombat Gully
Kosciuszko National Park, NSW
Ngarigo Country
Participants: Beth Davies, Stephen Davies (Photos, Report), Sue Davies, Andy Treasure, Emily Treasure, Pablo Ureña Vega
We were looking for a day trip to do with Beth and Pablo on for their day off work. Once we decided to try to get out to Teddys Hut, Pablo extended the invitation. Emily and Andy decided to join us as they happened to have Emily’s parents visiting who were able to babysit for them. Being a weekend we left early in an attempt to avoid the worst of the ski traffic and get spots to park our cars at Cascade Trail Car Park. The early start worked a treat as there was only one car in the car park when we arrived.
Max elevation: 1730 m
Total climbing: 672 m
Total descent: -672 m
Average speed: 5.18 km/h
Total time: 05:06:41
On the drive up, I became very concerned about our prospects of skiing all the way, as the snow cover was almost non-existent beside the road on the way up. The beginning of the trail was also patchy. Emily and Andy arrived just after we did and were off to our early start. As Sue and I are more than twice everyone else’s age and everyone else was constantly in training and competing in long-distance trail runs, we were hoping they wouldn’t go too hard on us. Could we possibly keep them in sight?
As we headed out, we were very pleased to see that the snow cover did cover the ground, although there were plenty of small shrubs poking out. It was a pleasantly cool day and we made good progress. The youngsters always managed to keep their noses in front and seemed reluctant to pause for breaks along the way. There were two sets of tracks heading along our route. We made use of them from time to time. We saw a few brumbies on the way in and plenty of evidence of their presence!
Teddys Hut
We made good time to the hut, where we found some small grassy patches to sit for lunch. After checking out the hut some of us headed a short distance further down towards Wombat Gully, stopping where it becomes steeper and heavily wooded. We regathered at the hut before commencing on our return ski. The hut logbook had only one winter entry, signed by Monika. I was later able to verify via her Facebook entry that, as I had expected, it was another New South Wales Nordic Ski Club member that I know. We could have had a slightly larger group with better timing.
The return trip proved interesting at times as those exposed shrub tops got in the way. On one occasion, I was sliding as well as I skiing across an innocuous-looking bit of greenery, only to have that ski come to a dead stop and cause me to do a nose-deep face-plant in the snow. Luckily, no injury. Beth seemed to get some delight as she saw a few falls on a downhill section with lots of exposed small shrubs as we all tried to avoid the obstacles in our way.
Again on the way out, a good steady pace was maintained, and despite the youthful energy of our skiing companions, Sue and I arrived back at the carpark with them. During the entire ski, we failed to see any other skiers out touring until about 1km from the end, where two girls were out having what looked like their first ski on cross country skis. We were amazed how crowded it was at the car park, there were even cars waiting for someone to leave in order to park. Everyone seemed to be within sight of their cars, tobogganing or playing in the snow.
It was a wonderful day out and we thoroughly enjoyed our youthful company.
Teddys Hut Logbook 2/12/2006 – 26/8/2018, 10/12/2020 – 24/7/2022
Clickable icons on a world map which open the related trip report
A detailed, searchable trip list with links to reports, photo galleries and other content
