Elevation: 2228 m / 7310 ft
Type: peak
Views: 6,510
Popularity: 42% (2155th place)
Description of mountain:
Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain on mainland Australia, the easiest of the elite "Seven Summits", and it is also on the Ultra list. The mountain is 2228 metres high and is located in the Australian state of New South Wales, halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, or 2.5 hours' drive from the capital Canberra. Like Triglav, it has its own national park — Kosciuszko National Park — and belongs to the Snowy Mountains range, more broadly to the Australian Alps, and even more broadly to the trans-Australian ridge known as the Great Dividing Range, the fifth-longest continental mountain range in the world, which separates the Australian Outback from coastal Australia. The name is of Polish origin but is pronounced "kosiuzko" in Australia. Until 1997 it was spelled Mount Kosciusko. The name comes from the first documented ascent on 15 February 1840 by the Polish explorer Paweł Edmund Strzelecki, whose upper part of the mountain reminded him of an artificial mound in Kraków, after which he named it Kosciuszko.
Some sources still mistakenly claim that the Aboriginal name for the mountain is Tar Gan Gil. Consensus holds that this name actually referred to the neighbouring Mount Townsend (the second-highest mountain on mainland Australia). Nevertheless, it is widely accepted that Aboriginal people climbed the summit long before European settlers (information board, 2019), probably tens of thousands of years before 1840, as carbon dating indicates they were present on the current Australian territory 80,000 years ago (Clarkson et al., 2018). The mountain is included in the Seven Summits under Dick Bass's original classification, while under the later Messner classification the Seven Summit for the region is Puncak Jaya (4884 m, also known as Carstensz Pyramid). Messner's classification defines continents more technically as tectonic plates, including various Oceania archipelagos such as Indonesian Papua, where the higher Puncak Jaya is located.
There are essentially two routes to the summit from two starting points. The first is Charlotte Pass; the second is the ski village of Thredbo, from where a four-seat chairlift (Kosciuszko Express) can take you up about 550 vertical metres. The mountain is accessible year-round, though the slopes are snow-covered from June to early December (photos of the trail from 7 December 2019 show some sections still under snow). Dick Bass described his ascent in a chapter titled "A Walk in the Park", immediately conveying how easy the approach is. Viki Grošelj similarly calls the route a very pleasant walk in his book Najvišji vrhovi celin and compares the access to Velika Planina. As early as the late 1980s he marvelled at the 2-metre-wide metal mesh walkway supported on steel posts. These elevated paths remain today, covering 4.3 km from the upper chairlift station to Rawson Pass. Camping in the immediate vicinity is no longer permitted. Bicycles are allowed from Charlotte Pass to Rawson Pass (2100 m). The warning about persistent flies is still valid — on calm, warm days it is advisable to bring insect repellent (or follow the Australian method of crushing tea-tree leaves and rubbing them on your backpack and body).
Literature and sources:
Bell, Steven (2006). Seven summits: The quest to reach the highest point on every continent. New York: Gramercy Books.
Grošelj, Viki (2018). Najvišji vrhovi celin. Buča d.o.o.
Information board at Rawson Pass, 7 December 2019.
Norman, Kasih, Inglis, Josha, Clarkson, Chris, Faith, J. Tyler, Shulmeister, James and Harris, Daniel (2017). An early colonisation pathway into northwest Australia 70-60,000 years ago. Quaternary Science Reviews 180 229-239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2017.11.023
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