A challenging but extraordinary 55-kilometer trail across the so-called ‘Roof of Australia’ has opened, after six years of development. The final 12 kilometers have just been finished.
Called the Snowies Alpine Walk, the trail in New South Wales’s Kosciuszko National Park, adds more than 28 kilometers of new tracks that connect existing tracks, including the Porcupines walk, Illawong walk, Main Range loop and the Kosciuszko Summit trail into a continuous route.
The $27 million project’s upgrades of existing paths were designed to protect threatened alpine grasses by creating walkways above the grasses. The entire trail, determined as a grade-four hike, which is the second highest, links the alpine villages of Thredbo, Charlotte Pass, Guthega, Perisher and Crackenback through the wilderness of the Kosciuszko National Park. Mount Kosciuszko is Australia’s tallest peak.
And a splendid hike it is too, not that I’ve done the entire 55 kilometres or anything close to it.