Snowy Mountains of Australia

Snowy Mountain natives enjoying the weather

Author Mark Schulman hikes the Snowies

Everyone has heard of Australia's most famous natural assets: The Outback, the Great Barrier Reef, Ayer's Rock. While perhaps a lesser-known place on the map, the Snowy Mountains are equally stunning and well worth a visit. Part of the Great Dividing Range along the eastern coast, they're Australia's very own "Alps."

The Snowies, as the Aussies refer to them, are neither high nor steep. Millions of years of erosion and extreme temperatures have left them rounded and smooth in appearance, much like the Appalachians in the U.S. The difference is that Australia is uniformly a very low, flat continent; consequently, the Snowies offer a range of vistas as impressive and imposing as the high glaciers of New Zealand or the Alps of Europe.

The Snowies are nestled within the Great Dividing Range, which stretches some 300 miles from Canberra, Australia's capital, to the state of Victoria, not far from Melbourne. Within the range lies Australia's highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko (7,313 feet), as well as the country's only glacial lakes and alpine zone.

Although Mount Kosciuszko was "discovered" and named in 1840 (for a Polish general and hero of the American War of Independence), natives have visited the mountain and its environs throughout history. Evidence has shown that Aborigine tribes began making summer visits to the Snowy Mountains some 21,000 years ago in search of protein-rich Bogong moths, which migrated to the highest peaks after the last Ice Age. Since then, European explorers, pastoralists, miners, scientists, and eventually skiers and tourists have all made their way to the mountains in search of food, fortune, and fun.

Those who benefit the most from these mountains, however, are the hikers (or bushwalkers in Australian English), who get to enjoy 280,000 acres of unspoiled backcountry in Mount Kosciuszko National Park.

The park, established in 1967, is home to ten peaks over 6,800 feet high, forested valleys of snow gum trees, seasonal snow fields, and endless miles of some of the country's most spectacular bushwalking trails.