2014 - Falls Creek to Eskdale Spur via Mt Bogong - Day 5 - Mt Bogong to Cleve Cole

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The wind blew steadily all night, the fact that we had dug in the tents a bit made our sleep much easier - the walls on the southern side of the tents providing and deflecting the wind from our tents . There was no great rush to get out of bed and going as it was cold and windy. A late breakfast at about 9am sort of set the tone for the day. We only had about 4km to travel to Cleve Cole hut so there was no rush.

The snow was pretty icy which required care to avoid slipping and falling. Once again the sun was out and the weather great. As we were packing up our tents we saw the first people that we had seen for a couple of days. They were walking to the summit, having come up Eskdale spur in the morning they were out for a day snow boarding and gully skiing. A great day for that. Having had breakfast and packed our camp site we stuck on our crampons and walked off the summit through Hells Gap and onto the pole line to Cleve Cole Hut. We met a group that were off skiing for the day. They were a bunch of Ski Instructors from Mt Buller, clearly they had forgotten that Movember happens in November, not August. These guys were up for a mates 30th and had decided that mustaches were the go. They let us know that one of their party had a buggered knee and the other had Ebola or some sort of gastro bug. 

We arrived at Cleve Cole and meet the person with the buggered knee, I asked her where her mustache was and so she showed me - I was not quite sure what I was going to see until she pulled a falsely from her pocket. We also meet the Ebola case who had a mo as well. Again t-shirt weather. We setup camp, had lunch and then went off to ski gullies.

Another group of people arrived whilst we were having lunch, a group of three snow shoers. It turned out that one of them was practicing for a trip in the new year up Aconcagua in Argentina. We asked them how they got into the snow shoeing and ski touring. The guy who wanted to climb Aconcagua was a scout and the other two were friends that he had managed to inspire to try the outdoors and they did have the bug. 

Chis just wanted to ski and did a few runs before being joined by JayBee. We proceeded to climb to the top of the ridge above Cleve Cole and then did a massive series of 8's all the way down to the bottom. Seeing it was sooooooooo much fun we did it all over again, before we were joined by Cam, Pierre and Mr Bean. We skied down Camp Gully and just had a generally just a great day, practicing telemark turns and dodging trees and creeks. The afternoon was really brilliant. We reluctantly headed back to Cleave Cole as the shadows started to grow longer.

We had afternoon tea, then Cam dug in our kitchen. The group of people for the 30th had headed up earlier to the ridge line above Cleve Cole for a sunset celebration, some champagne and cheese cake. They returned when t was well and truly dark skiing and lighting their way with head torches. It looked really good as they come down the slope head torches on and a slow ski down.

A quite nights sleep.