On Tuesday night for the first time in my hiking career I feared for my life and had my EPIRB cradled next to me, luckily I didn’t have to use it. There were a mix of 3 ‘failures’ and bad luck that led to this situation: weather, gear and personal. As for the weather, now reading the reports, there were gusts of 130km/hr and 30-50mm of precipitation in the form of rain and then snow (about 3 inches).
On the 4th day of a planned 6 day hike across much of the Snowies (a trip report to come later), I was making my way across the main range on route to the Blue Lake. The day started off stunningly with clear skies, a platypus sighting and not a puff of wind and I made great progress from Schlink hut across the rolling grounds to the main range but when I hit Consett-Stephen Pass, the wind and rain started. At this point I glanced down Guthega ck and considered bailing, but decided to waterproof up and push through.
As I crossed Mt Tate, the weather continued to build, though still within manageable levels, but when I hit the saddle coming into Mt Anton, the rain and intense wind had me sheltering in a natural rock bivy and finishing the last of my chocolate (pic below). From here I tried to head to what looked like a more sheltered spot on Pounds ck but was repulsed by the intense westerly winds and had to settle for the western side of the saddle between Mt Anderson and Mt Anton. Here I pitched my MLD Duomid and discovered the first of the personal failures, I had packed only 3 long 9 inch and one 4.5 inch Ti Goat carbon fiber pegs, instead of four 9 inch ones. I also now realise I should have also packed some as additional tieouts. A little lower the wind wasn’t so bad and died off during the evening leaving amazing views of Watson’s Craggs (second pic). As the light faded I watched mist come from the West as the wind switched direction and marveled at how things change so quickly in the high country.
Going to bed around 8, I had a relatively nice 3.5 hours of sleep, listening to the wind and rain building and thinking to myself, I’m glad I brought the Duomid. Around 11:30 however things started to unravel. I woke to find the top of my down sleeping bag fairly wet as the wind was now coming up the valley and had somehow loosened all of the tents tensioners. This led to wind and rain blowing through the top vent of the tent and then coming down through the mesh onto my sleeping bag. I hopped out and tightened the cords, only for them to slip back and again become loose. To remedy this, I tied the ropes of the inner tent onto the pegs, giving a second level of tension and security. I now went back into the tent and arranged myself on the opposite side, farthest away from the incoming wind.
For the next 2 hours I had a relatively decent time as everything held but as I lay there I noticed that the sound of the precipitation had changed and around 1:30ish I peeked out to see a good deal of snow was building. ‘Ah good’ I thought to myself, ‘no more nasty rain’, but just as I was thinking this an almighty gust ripped the 4.5 inch peg (which is still much more burly than an average peg) out of the damp soil and shot it into the snow, never to be seen again. Now things started to get really bad.
- Tent before the storm
- Last pieces of chocolate!
Now with only 3 pegs, the tent collapsed and I was left clutching its remains to keep the snow off me. I unfurled my emergency blanket to keep some of the moisture off, however this served to further wet my sleeping bag by trapping any of the moisture that was coming out of the sleeping bag and myself. So for the next 6 hours I lay there trying to keep the shelter high enough so it wouldn’t wet the bag, but not so high as to attract too much attention from the wind. Of course as the shelter and my body were warmer than 0c any snow that fell on ‘us’ quickly melted into pesky water. Adding to the problem, in the cold, I couldn’t close the top vent of the shelter leading to the odd flurry of snow and precipitation entering.
For the next 3 hours I stayed in this position with the sleeping bag becoming gradually wetter until the section from my knees down was almost completely deflated. Luckily my newly purchased Exped Synmat Winterlite was providing ample warmth from below and from about 4 am I started horizontally rocking against it to produce some warmth. This worked great for the first hour, but then as I started to tire from holding the tent and rocking and I slowed up and started to cool off. At this point, embarrassingly I tried reasoning with the weather asking it in varying moods to leave as I cradled my EPIRB.
Luckily an hour or so later, light started to filter in which produced a massive boost in morale. With no letup in the weather, I got myself ready to leave when need be. I put my EPRIB in my pocket, my compass around my neck and started looking for the gear I had left outside, which was now covered in snow. Included in this outside gear were my shoes and rain protection (in the vestibule), which were now wet and full of snow (another personal failure). Mid way through struggling to put on my wet socks, insult was added to injury as the suprisingly sharp Silva compass around my neck put a 5cm hole in my Exped which quickly deflated.
Now with a wet sleeping bag and less warmth from beneath, I decided it was time to chance a quick descent to the hopefully warmer valleys below. I remember thinking to myself at this point ‘this is it’, if you don’t make this, it is game over!’. I packed my bag, tucked my sleeping bag into my jacket and pants and crashed through the snow down into Pounds ck. Only once I descended halfway down the scrubby creek did I feel that as long as I didn’t break anything too badly, I was now safe. Walking along the beautiful lower reaches of the creek, I funnily enough started scouting the river for future packrafting trips, apparently quickly departing from my revelations in the night of ‘I don’t want to go hiking for quite some time’. From here I walked to Guthega before following the 10km or so of road to Smiggins Hole where I managed to get a lift back into Jindabyne.
Lessons learnt…
Bring more pegs
Bring a synthetic sleeping bag on trips where wetness and life threatening cold may be experienced
Where possible sleep in huts or Hillebergs if you are on an extended trip in alpine areas and can’t get accurate weather updates
Even if your wet weather gear is wet, try and find a place to put it inside your tent
Synthetic puffy jackets and warm inflatable mats are the best things since sliced bread (though I already knew this)!
Any more tips or similar experiences?
im happy to learn the lessons reading it here than going what you went through 
