The mountain has spoken. It doesn't want me to summit this snow-season.
Braving Alpine Sharks I trundled up the Staircase, sore knee and all, and still wanting to get up top with some snow and do some camping.
With what I thought was a reasonable weather forecast:
A few mm in early morning and some wind, getting lighter as the day progressed.It was a bit different. Got regular showers/hail/snow as I got higher. no wind to speak of in the trees.
Once I got to the exposed bit, there was wind.
I didn't have the gear for the final exposed bit, a light plastic rain coat, shorts, and my hiking gloves were saturated and freezing in the wind.
I couldn't see far, and was still 200m-ish from the summit, so I guessed it was not going to get better. I certainly wasn't in danger of overheating at anytime during the day.
Anyway, I turned back, a few minutes later, out of the wind, the sky went blue and warm sun shone. I nearly turned around to try again, but I could see dark clouds rolling in again. Maybe the mountain was setting a trap for me?
Oh Well, started heading down about 4pm. It snowed/hailed/rained pretty much all the way down. And I got back to the car at 7:30pm (started 9:30am) and drove home.
To be honest, I had a fun day. I protected the sore knee for the most part by stepping up with the other leg and taking care. It was fun walking in the snow, hail and whatever. Just didn't have the gear for the last bit. I needed last weekend's weather, and I could've camped somewhere up high. I think I earned my junk food reward on the way home by lugging a pack up 1200m then turning around and lugging it back down.
I reckon that'll do my attempts at snow camping for this year (until I misread a weather report and
bound waddle out the door for a 4 hours drive, 8 hour slog up a hill....)
Final Score: Mt. Bogong 3 - Me 0.