Australian Alps Walking Track - Thredbo Village

Day: 21
Date: Tuesday, 07 May 2019
Start:  Thredbo Ski Village
Finish:  Thredbo Ski Village
Daily Kilometres:  0.0
Total AAWT Kilometres:  447.1
Weather:  Mild and sunny
Accommodation:  Thredbo Alpine Hotel
Nutrition:
  Breakfast:  Hotel buffet breakfast
  Lunch:  Pies and pastries
  Dinner:  Burgers and chips, apple crumble and custard
Aches:  Recovering
Highlight:  Beautiful day for hanging around the very quiet Thredbo Village and enjoying an al fresco lunch at the bakery in the sunshine.
Lowlight:  Cleaning up the bathroom after drying out our groundsheet.  House-keeping would have had a fit if they had seen the floor and bath after all the dirt and leaf matter had dried and dropped off the sheet.
Pictures: No pictures today.
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:

We had the perfect recovery day in Thredbo.  After sleeping well in a bed that is bigger than our tent, we enjoyed the excellent buffet breakfast included with the price of our room, before completing our usual drying, packing, laundry, email, etc., chores at a relaxed pace.

By around 11am, we had completed most chores, and spent a very pleasant hour or so wandering around the village on a clear, sunny and mild day.  Thredbo is about 4km off the AAWT, and our first task tomorrow is to get back to the trail which passes by the Thredbo Top Station, 650m above us and 4km by trail.  There is a chairlift operating for tourists, provided the weather is OK, and we toyed with the idea of hiking up there today, with no packs (so that we have walked every step) and catching the chairlift down, and then using it to get back to the Top Station tomorrow morning along with our fully-loaded packs.  However, it was expensive ($31 each one-way) and with a forecast of moderate winds and snow tomorrow, we could not be sure the chairlift would even be operating.  Looks like we are destined to start tomorrow with a big hill following a big breakfast.

After a lovely lunch sitting in the sun outside the bakery we did some more shopping before meandering back to our room and spending a lazy afternoon doing more email and planning our next days hiking, with the TV on in the background.  Later, we had dinner at the same bistro as last night, one of only two eateries open in the whole village.

There are two cold weather fronts coming through in the next three days, each forecast to bring winds and snow to the alpine region.  Tomorrow's planned hike takes us along the Main Range, the highest stretch of trail you can hike in Australia, so I'm a little apprehensive about the conditions we will face and perhaps have to camp in.  However, we have good gear, and can make a choice to take a lower less-exposed (and 10km longer) route when we reach Rawson Pass on the shoulder of Mt Kosciusko (Australia's highest at 2228m) after about 11km of tomorrow's hike.  We are anticipating the worst and hopefully will be pleasantly surprised.