The Crosscut Saw

The Crosscut Saw is one of those yuppie walks that just has to be done so that you can say at a party "Yes, I've done that one". It is also a very good hike (regardless) and this is an account of my first walk here.

I drove up on the Friday and walked to Howitt to have a quick look around, returning to the carpark to meet the others as they drove up that night. We set of in the morning with 5, but as it turned out Rosemary was sick and lasted 1/2km, Joan accompanied her to the car, and Jack came with us to Howitt for the view and a snow fight, before returning to take the others back to Melbourne. This left Leo and me. Our original plan was to walk along the Crosscut Saw, continue on to the Viking and then circle around to return to the carpark. With only the two of us we decided to just walk out to Mt Speculation and back.

We had lunch at Mt Howitt in the shade of a snow gum. From there things warmed up a bit, with no shelter from the midday sun. The ridge gets very narrow in places making for some intersting walking. We joked at the possible conditions ahead, what with names on the map like the Devil's Staircase, Terrible Hollow, Mt Despair, Hell's Window, The Razor........... We stopped laughing as we walked down into the Horrible Gap, knowing that we were only going to have to walk up even higher on the other side. The way down into the Horrible Gap gets steeper and steeper as you walk down but the is a nice shady clearing at the bottom in which to rest before climbing Mt Specualtion.

There are a couple of tricky little climbs along the way up Mt Speculation that nobody bothered to mention to us before. With just a back pack, they wouldn't have proved too much trouble but a large camera bag as well made things a little more challenging. We found an easy way around one of the obstacles but that was not until we were coming back and had the benefit of seeing it from above.

  
Storm over Mt Howitt from Mt Speculation

We eventually reached the campsite which was relatively busy by now and looked back across to Mt Howitt to see a large thunderstorm pounding the smiles from some not so happy campers' faces. It made me happy though, because the print of this image is awesome. We thought that we might have been in for some bad weather ourselves, but the thunderstorms seemed to go everywhere except over us.

The following day was overcast and the weather was gradually worsening. We set off back up Mt Speculation and I used the excuse of taking this photograph to have a brief rest before tackling the rest of the walk. So I start slowly and warm up on a walk....

By the time we reached Mt Howitt again it was raining and the clouds had reduced visibiltiy to 100m. As we passed a group of school girls and their teachers setting off for the same walk we had just done, we wished them luck and chuckled quietly to ourselves. With luck they would look on their walk as an "experience", one of those treasured hiking trips that you try hard to forget, but stick with you regardless.

 I returned again in 1997.....