Yesterday morning the temperature in Maydena as I drove through was 2 C with clear skies and little wind. By the time I had driven along the Styx road (which is open to the public to get to the Styx forest reserve) and turned right onto Jacques road it had dropped to 1 C. The gate is a little up Jacques road and after wrestling with the lock in its Ned Kelly outfit I continued on my merry way. There are several turn-offs to confuse you but if you continue straight ahead you will ultimately go under the high tension wires and cross the Andromeda link road. Jacques road continues uphill with the power lines remaining on your left. Ignore the Jacques road spur 2 turn and keep heading uphill. Not far past the spur road turn you will come to a logged area with an obvious quarry at the end. Park before the quarry. This is just under 5kms from the turn off on Styx road. At about this point I realised I had forgotten the camera and would need to rely on the trusty phone camera, still that's better than last week when I forgot my water bottle and had to drink out of puddles with a zip lock bag.
Walk through the quarry and straight ahead on a steadily rougher 4wd track for a bit over 1/2 km. Just past two large logs which have been partially removed to clear the 4wd track is an obvious cairned and taped route on the high (right hand) side of the road. From here the track is fairly easy to follow, a little rough in places, and occasionally a little obscure. The lower section is through some forest, where fungi were prolific and at times frozen. The middle section continues up through some overgrown boulder fields which yesterday were covered in frost and very slippery. Lost my prescription sunglasses somewhere in that section. Finally you pop up onto a heathy plateau with the historic summit cairn in the near distance. The pad continues obviously to this.From here the views to the Snowy range and Mt Field areas were spectacular, further south was a little cloudy. You get a real feel for the layout of the peaks of the Snowy range in particular. It took me just under an hour to get up to the peak, 40 minutes down and a couple of bruises from slips on icy rocks. Back at the car it was a balmy 2 C.
Mt Styx is a shy one, you never really get a good feel for the peak as you are driving to it or walking up it. The summit plateau is not remarkable either but on a clear day the views really make it worthwhile. For me its a 3 out of 5 peak.
- Mushroomsicles
- Frost crystal
- The Summit cairn
