Kosciuszko Lakes Walk

Kosciuszko National Park, Australia
December 2002
Danny Yee, Camilla Ip
(thumbnails link to larger images)

The lakes walk from Charlotte Pass to Blue Lake is an accessible daywalk through a gorgeous alpine area (Australia's largest). It is less than 10 kilometres to Blue Lake and back, on what is a effectively a small road except for the final descent to the lake, but the climbing involved (a total of 600m ascent and 600m descent over the return trip) may deter the unfit - and the weather can turn nasty at any time. More people do the climb of Mount Kosciuszko, but I think this walk is nicer.

Camilla and I weren't sure what we were going to do when we woke up in the Sonnblick Inn in Jindabyne. We'd just finished a three day walk out to Big Bend and Tarn Bluff and, having some blisters, Camilla wasn't keen on more walking. So we had breakfast and went to the Jindabyne Visitors Centre, where I bought the Kosciuszko Alpine Flora tome (Costin, Gray, and Totterdall) and Camilla the rather more portable "Wild Guide". Inspired by that, and with Camilla feeling perkier after coffee, we decided to do the Lakes Walk after all and drove up to Charlotte Pass.

It was overcast and windy on the way out, but the sun came out for the final climb at the end, back to Charlotte Pass and the car.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given we took the books we'd just bought and were carrying with us, the trip turned into something of a botanical excursion - though a "short cut" from Headley Tarn back to the main track brought us closer to some of the scrub than we might have wanted!