2014 - Falls Creek to Eskdale Spur via Mt Bogong - Day 6 - Cleve Cole down Eskdale Spur

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Another glorious morning - t shirt weather again. After breakfast we packed up and had one last look around as we all knew that this was the last day of the trip. We made good time to Hells Gap. We met up with the three snow shoers - they wee off to practice self arrest on the event of a slide down a icy slope - they had their ice axes but I suspect that he snow was too soft for them.

We dumped our packs at Hells Gap and and did some skiing for an hour or so. We had a good look at where we were heading off the mountain onto a platform at the top of Eskdale Spur. We carefully sidled down to the platform as a fall would be massively inconvenient but not overly dangerous. As we were having lunch I noticed a guy blasting down from the top of the turn off from the pole line, next he was at Hells Gap, then on the platform and then shooting off down the path to Michelle Hut. He was a very accomplished skier.

As we were having lunch several groups were climbing up Eskdale on to Cleve Cole hut for the week end. Our trip was ending and theirs was beginning.

We met a group at Michelle hut - the same vintage as us and from Surrey Thomas Rovers. They had a typical ex Rover supply kit, at least a 2 liter cask of port.

This trip cemented in a couple of things for me - one was that a lot of the people that we have met of these trips got a taste of the outdoors from Scouting and two that the biggest challenge for people who do these outdoorsy things is that they struggle to find people who they can do these things with. We are really a very luck group of mates.

The walk down from Michelle's hut just punished our toes and it was a great relief to get to the bottom and get those boots off.