8 of us set out towards Charlottes Pass, although not everybody planned to do the full walk. Once we got there we found cars parked along both sides of the road from the village turn-off onwards. Once organised we headed off down the steep that that takes you to Blue Lake. Once we reached the Snowy River, there was a traffic jam of people waiting to use the stepping stones, some of them patently with no idea of how to use them. Most of us just waited until we had a clear run, the Bakker family avoided that by removing boots and socks, putting on sandals and wading across. Then we had a long steady climb up, eventually seeing Hedley Tarn to our right and stopping there for morning tea.
After tea, 5 of us headed to the left of the track to cross the ridge between us and the valley. There was a profusion of snow daisies and eyebright flowering along the way. Once we crested the ridge we essentially contoured round heading upstream, most of it fairly easy going but with one or two patches where the dried grass made for slippery footing, especially when going uphill. After what seemed to be a pretty short time we could see Club Lake and a few minutes later arrived there and found a reasonable spot for lunch.
The lake was beautiful, a small shallow lake surrounded by steep cliffs, with large patches of snow on some parts of the cliffs. The main walk track passes along the tops of the cliffs, and from time to time we could see walkers silhouetted against the horizon. There were 2 other walkers there, one with a snow board, and their interest was the largest patch of snow on the cliffs. The one with the board took his time getting to the top of the snow, and it looked like there was an accident waiting to happen. However, when he took off he did a beautiful controlled slalom down the snow and came to a controlled stop at the bottom. After they had a bit of a rest, they headed off, presumably happy to have a story about snow boarding in the middle of an Australian summer.
Graeme had found some old black and white photographs on the National Library web site of cattle grazing at Club Lake, and made a determined effort to work out exactly where the photographer had been standing when he took the shots. Once he had finished, and the rest of us had finished making friends with hordes of bush and march flies, we reluctantly headed off, along the river valley rather than returning to the track. It seemed to be an easy sensible route, a gentle descent along the river to get to the base of the main track section up to Charlottes Pass, which we could see from most places along the way. Much more attractive than a climb up over to the main track then a long, steep descent along that track. However, much of the valley floor is covered with fairly dense shin- to knee-high shrubs, with these hiding holes and streamlets, so not easy going. At one point a low-flying helicopter crossed our path several times, but it didn’t seem to be interested in us so we just continued our walk. A detour was made to investigate the ruins of a stream gauging station that we had tried to find on our last Geehi Club walk. This time we found it. Down near Foremans Chimney we crossed the Snowy River to inspect the anchor rock for a bridge across the river from the 1950’s. Remains of the cable and decking were still in the river, 70 yrs later. From there it was an easy walk to the foot of the track up to Charlotte Pass. The sign says something to the effect of “Charlottes Pass 500m, walking time 20 minutes”, which gives a bit of an idea of its steepness. Not a nice way to end a walk, at least until you had got to the top, but its the only practical way. At the top with some National Parks people and some SES vehicles. They explained the helicopter – somebody had got them selves into trouble along the main track and need rescuing, an SES all-terrain vehicle had gone along the track to collect them. No big deal, just business as usual for them, when you think of the hordes of people who go along that track, many with no idea whatsoever, it’s surprising there are no more problems.