Located in the Snowy Mountains, Mount Kosciuszko (pronounced Kos-ee-oss-ko), is Australia’s highest peak and yet is achievable as a day hike from town on well-formed and enjoyable trails.
This day was miserable. I took a nearly 17 hours flight from Vancouver, Canada to Sydney, Australia. After spending a quick night in Sydney, drove to Thredbo. I was planning on spending the night, climb the mountain and drive back to Sydney afterwards. Well, that happened. However, I was on the mountain during mud season., There was not another sole on the mountain and the weather was terrible. 65+mph winds and snow. Visibility was less than 10 feet. In fact, the only way I made it to the top was that I downloaded the .gpx coordinates prior to the trip…I jammed up a straight line to the summit and ran down to get out of there. Potentially embarrassed to say, this is the one I wanted to bail on.
There is some controversy over whether Mount Kosciuszko or Indonesia’s Puncak Jaya should be the seventh mountain. This debate comes from the geographical definition of the continent of Australia/Oceania. Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain on Australia, however, when taking into account all of Oceania, Puncak Jaya in Indonesia is technically the higher mountain.
The Richard Bass Seven Summits List is a list of the seven tallest mountains in each of the seven continents. The Bass List comprises Everest, Aconcagua, Denali, Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Kosciuszko and Vinson.