Sunday 27th December 2020
Start Point: Geehi Picnic Area (8:00am)
End Point: Thredbo Village (9:40pm)
Alltrails Stats:
Distance: 33.52km completed
Elevation: 2108m
Moving Time: 10:36:22
Total Time: 14:04:18
Calories Burnt: 4664
Weather: Sunny, 15’C, Windy at the top.
Difficulty: 8/10 -> Taking distance/elevation/terrain into account.
Notes -> Hannels Spur track is the single highest elevated track in Australia @1800m) . It is the same route that Strzelecki took as the first European to climb Kosciusko in 1840. A very tough but rewarding classic route.
Map downloaded onto my Garmin 6x Sapphire and AllTrails on Iphone.
We started off in the early hours of Sunday morning (6:40am) from Thredbo, driving to Geehi Picnic took us about 45 minutes with no traffic. There were 13 of us and we had 5 cars between us, so we drove 4 cars to Geehi to be left there over night. One of us (me), will drive the other 4 drivers back to pick the cars up the morning after. Because we had a group size, I planned for us to complete this within 15 hours (to reach Kosciusko summit before sunset -> or after 5pm, to avoid all the crowds as chairlift would be close by then.)
Starting the track from Geehi, within 1km, you will reach an unavoidable river crossing. The water here will be freezing as it is early in the morning, using poles will help balance you for the crossing.
After we all dried our feet, we continued on, eventually reaching the start of the track (where the signboard is -> see cover photo). From here it is a solid 6.5km steep incline to Moira flat (a possible camping spot if planning to do over a few nights). Since there were 2 slower people in our group, we occassionally took short breaks along the way up. We arrived at Moira flat at 11:45am, this is a wide open exposed spot where we decided to have our lunch. This is also a spot to refill your water ( I would purify the water here, even though you may read elsewhere the water is clean enough). The track going up to Moira Flat have been cleared up very well, you should not have any issues finding the track. We encountered just one black snake on our way to Moira Flat, and some leeches, but other than that, no issues.
From Moira Flat to the next signpost (you will reach more open area) took us another hour, track is still very easy to navigate:
From here, it is relatively flat for the next 4km (with little elevation), you will be following the stacked rocks to guide you. I would suggest having a map handy just to make sure you are going the right way. My Garmin watch will notify me if I’m going offtrack. Other than that, we had no issues. Having long pants over this next section will help, or expect to get a few scratches here and there around your legs as it can be quite swampy. Easy going for the next few hours, we reach a nice break spot (to wait for the slower members) and break here for almost 30 minutes.
After this, there is another 300-400m elevation till Kosciusko summit, we could have merged back into the main range, but decided to walked off the main range track and finish up the Hannels Spur track (if you look at the alltrails gpx, the Hannels Spur just ended in the middle of nowhere, so you will need to keep going straight until you merge into the middle of the summit track. We reached the summit around 5pm and there was no one up here but our group, looks like everyone gone back to use the chairlift down.
Stayed up the summit for around 40 minutes (waiting for slower members etc). We make our descent down back to the start of dead horse gap, we got some rain on the way back but it was nothing major. Trekking the Dead Horse Gap during sunset is as beautiful as it can get.
We got down to thredbo river walk just before dark, and completed the last 4km back to thredbo in the dark with headtorches arriving at Thredbo around 9:30pm.
Now that I have done this walk, I would feel comfortable trail running this and or completing in the rain. With a smaller group, you can complete this around 10 hours with breaks. I got my 2 friends who was a bit slower over the line at the end!
Interested in doing this? Here’s the alltrails recording I recorded:
https://www.alltrails.com/explore/recording/hannel-spur-dd28e50
Strava Details here:
Check out some photos here of what to expect:
Check out the Relive video here:
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