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COLD MOUNTAIN!
A weekend in the snow country with the boys
and girls from Wangaratta 4X4 Club!
Story by Club Vice President - Mark Andrews
- August '04
We first met some of the Wangaratta club members at the Advanced
Driving Course in March and quickly formed new friendships with
them. Before the weekend was out, we’d promised to share a trip
together—hopefully in the snow country. Before too many weeks
had passed a date had been set and we were looking forward to
renewing acquaintances and getting amongst the very high country in
early August.
Colin and Kathy Walker made their way to the Milawa region on
the Friday staying at Colin’s brother’s place so they’d be ready
bright an early next day. The rest of us would leave the Big Smoke
early morning Saturday and head for Milawa where we were to
rendezvous with the Wang crew. The Olivers and Andrews hooked up on
the Hume Highway and travelled to Wangaratta stopping only for
Milton to call the 4WD Radio Show on 97.4 FM to do a live cross
with his “It fell off the back of a truck” segment. We met up with
members of Wangaratta Club before lunch after a visit to Milawa
Mustards where we tried out some local taste sensations.
After stocking up there we went on to the Milawa Cheese factory
for some cheese tasting as well. We had lunch together there before
heading off to cold mountain! We trekked towards the Buckland
Valley where we struck camp beside the fast flowing King
River—it was a great spot. This would be our base camp for
the weekend.
On the way there we travelled though magnificent Mount Buffalo
National Park via Lake Buffalo where we saw our first glimpses of
snow—we just had to stop and play in it as you can see! We
were all acting like big kids—especially Colin! It was a lot
of fun dodging snowballs and ambushing unsuspecting victims!
Back at camp we cooked up a storm and yacked and laughed into
the night around a blazing log fire. We shared plenty of jokes and
stories and got to know our hosts better. The Wang folk are top
hosts! Sunday morning after an early breakfast we headed up to Mt
Selwyn where we stopped for morning tea and made a snow man
complete with CITYWEST Beanie). Some of us hiked up to the summit
leaving Milton to limp around below with an infected foot. The snow
was quite deep here and gave the Forerunner in our party a few
traction challenges as it bottomed out in the centre of track and
ending up beached on snow with all wheels off the ground! There
were plenty of great tracks to explore here—all with fresh,
deep snow. After a quick cuppa to keep us warm, we headed around to
Mount Sara and up to the helipad where we rigged up a makeshift
awning and had lunch as it began gently snowing all around us. Just
awesome!!
The helipad was just a big expanse of virgin snow, more than a
metre deep in places and hard going ploughing through it. The
bigger (and lifted) vehicles with mud tyres had no problems even
without chains, smaller vehicles became quickly stuck. There were
no previous vehicle tracks here, we were first there—kind of
special. The kids made an igloo with help from dad (Craig Cheetham
of the Wang club), and some of the bigger kids kept throwing
snowballs! (Colinnnn!!!) After lunch we drove back to our Buckland
Valley campsite for the pack up before heading into Myrtleford for
fuel, air-up—and ice-creams.
We did the McDonalds thing on the Hume Hwy at Glenrowan before
saying our goodbyes to host Noel Ham from the Wang club and then
made our way home to Melbourne taking it easy. The trip was a
little bit of a whirlwind tour in the timeframe we had allowed, but
it was packed with adventure, good fun, and some pretty hairy snow
driving at times. Snow driving is a lot harder than it looks, and
you need to take it carefully if you want to get home in one
piece.
- Mark Andrews (Vice President)
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