Crosscut Saw and the Terrible Hollow

Early European explorers must have been a miserable lot. A 10km x 10km square of the Australian Alpine Region contains Mt Despair, Horrible Gap, the Terrible Hollow, the Devils Staircase and Mt Buggery. (Though, perhaps the latter was named for recreation after all the other trials and tribulations.) And, the ‘explorers’ didn’t even have to deal with blackberry, this introduced and invasive bramble being one of the more painful complications of walking off-trail in valleys.

Despite the name, this area holds great attractions. The mountains are steep, the valleys are wooded, the rocks are spectacular and the trails, where they exist, offer fabulous views. It’s a very rewarding place to walk.

The most popular circuit is a four day walk starting at View Point on the Howitt Road. From there you head north to Macalistair springs and out along the Crosscut Saw, up and over Mt Buggery, down through the Horrible Gap and up again to a high camp at Mt Speculation. The second day is a drop down to Catherine Saddle, up and over Mt Despair, past the Razor and down into camp at Viking Saddle. The third day takes you over the Viking and South Viking and down, down, down to the Wonnangatta River to camp before the final day climbs the Zeta track up, up, up the Wonangatta Spur and back to the trail head. The camps have springs for water and, at the end of a hot, dry summer, like this one (and most others), they may be dry and water very difficult to find.

We set out with this in mind, prepared to alter our route if the springs were dry. Setting out at 11am from View Point, it was a beautiful walk along the crosscut saw, the rain-clouds making a beautiful backdrop for the steep, rocky mountain peaks. We reached Mt Speculation at about 5pm and set up camp and watched lighting flash over the ranges around us. It rained in the night and we awoke to a moody, foggy mountain vista. Though we had found water at Macalister Springs and at Mt Speculation, we found Catherine Saddle to be dry and, using this as a ‘canary’, decided that the Viking Saddle would also be dry. We had the choice of returning to the Mt Speculation spring and loading up with another 3-4L of water each, or to alter our route.

We decided to descend into the Terrible Hollow where we would certainly find water at the Wonnangatta River. Neither of us were disappointed withe change of plan; I’ve had yen to camp in the Terrible Hollow for a while. It’s remote, deep, wooded and somehow… secretive. Plus, I love to visit the sites of fictional novels. The Terrible Hollow, Devils Staircase and Crosscut Saw are much, much more famous as Hell, Satan’s Steps and Tailor’s Stitch, respectively, in John Marsden’s ‘Tomorrow‘ series.

The route down from Catherine Saddle begins easily on a old, presumably logging, road. Pretty soon it is lost in vegetation and you have to navigate you way down to a point where the valley floor is wide enough to pitch a tent and the spur from Mt Speculation meets the river. We, um, lost the track, descended far too soon down a very, very steep slope and thick, brushy vegetation. We came down to the river at a steep angle, up against an equally steep slope on the opposite bank. We then traversed the opposing slope (the side of the ridge running down from Mt Speculation) for some time (it was marginally less brushy) and descended the ridge until we reached the point we wanted to be. We set up camp by the Wonangatta river and it was as different as you can imagine from the previous night on Mt Speculation.

The third day we pushed on through the Terrible Hollow, following the river and, in places, the barest remnants of a path, all the way to the base of the spur that descends from the South Viking. Here we spoke to some walkers we met who carried enough water for two days, who had camped at the Viking and confirmed there was no water. They also said that another group on the circuit had sustained an injury and had taken another spur to a four-wheel drive track in the hope of reach help sooner.

The fourth and final day was a long (1km elevation gain) ascent up forested slopes, with some time on a four-wheel drive track, eventually coming into long grasses beneath (burned) snowgums.

All in all it was an adventurous and varied trip, much more so than the ‘Viking Circuit’ as there is the contrast of the deep valley and high alpine. There really isn’t a trail through the Terrible Hollow any longer, however, and this makes for some remote and tough (but fun) walking (or scrambling). At least right now, water is much more available in the valleys than on the peaks, so it’s a good alternative option for a late summer or autumn circuit. And it certainly isn’t as awful as the name suggests!

I went for a walk back up the track, to the last of Satan’s Steps. The sun had already warmed the great granite wall and I leaned against it with my eyes half shut, thinking about our hike, and the path and the man who’d built it, and this place called Hell. ‘Why did people call it Hell?’ I wondered. All those cliffs and rocks and vegetation, it did look wild. But wild wasn’t Hell. Wild was fascination, difficult, wonderful. No place was Hell, no place could be Hell. It’s the people calling it Hell, that’s the only thing that made it so. People just sticking names on places so that no one could see those places properly anymore. – ‘Tomorrow, When the War Began’, John Marsden (1995)