mt Feathertop / Hotham loop - by michelle

View from Mt. Feathertop looking west

​Bringing in the New Year with a 3dayer hike (which was meant to be 4!) around Hotham. We started at Harrietville – this is easily my favourite mountain village, I have started and ended so many hikes here and couldn’t recommend the pub enough. 

We drove from Melbourne to Harrietville in the morning and started walking about 1pm. From Harrietville we took the Bungalow Spur up to Federation hut/Mt Feathertop. This is a really nice spur for an accent of 1300m over 12km - lots of switchbacks and a good slow incline, so you don’t burn yourself out. 

Just before the 300m clib up Feathertop

Bungalow Spur, passing the tree line

Made Federation hut with loads of light left (thank you summer) and set up camp. We then went up Feathertop without packs in time for the sunset. Best decision ever. It did mean walking back 1.5km with 300m of descent in the dark, but it was totally worth it. We then had an extremely late dinner (tuna mornay!) in the dark. We’re not really stereotypical hikers; the amount of times we leave late morning and eat dinner in the dark is ridiculous (and yes we are often judged by other hikers). The thing is that you can do your own thing, as long as you’re safe, warm and have food and water, it doesn’t really matter what you do. Still, there’s raised eyebrows when you show up to camp as the sun goes down. On the plus side, there's no judgement in the morning as everyone's left by 6am and you have the hut to yourself!

Razorback, nearly at Hotham

2nd day we walked along the Razorback to Hotham, then down Swindlers Spur to Dibbins hut for the night. Dibbins is one of my favourite huts. I’ve been there 6 times on various hikes. It’s pretty basic on the inside but so iconic on the outside and in the most beautiful alpine meadow. 

​Unfortunately the famous Dibbins rat got into our packs and gnawed holes through the plastic food bags (just like that scene in Wallace and Gromit where Wallace tries to pour cereal but it comes out the other end where Shaun the sheep ate it). Mr Rat even tried to get through the peanut butter jar, thank god its teeth were no match for the plastic or else Mickey may have walked out then and there.

Dibbins Hut

Mickey & Dibbins hut

3rd day we headed north at Cobungra Gap and up past Blair Hut turning west at  Diamantina spur. I’ve once been down this spur and I can definitely recommend ascending. (Dad doesn’t speak fondly of Diamantina spur... I enjoy bringing the name up around him because he has such a wonderful wide-eyed reaction: 'oh that spur' and then proceeds to relive the whole painful experience). Look it’s pretty steep in parts, and generally (for my knees sake) I’d rather be walking up the hill. Diamantina gets you back to the Razorback in Fed hut, but our destination that night was MUMC on the Northwest spur. 

​This hut looks like something that could land on the moon. It stands for Melbourne Uni Mountaineering Club. Apparently members have extravagant events where they bring up instruments, fancy clothes, drinks and make pasta from scratch. 

Wild flowers and mountains viewed from Feathertop

​We reached MUMC hut by 4.30pm for a well deserved rest. The plan was to stay the night, but a pub meal was calling us and we figured that it’d probably only take 1.5hrs to walk 5km down Northwest spur, which takes you to a main rd about 7km from Harrietville. So off we went. The track started out fine, but got more and more overgrown as we went. In fact it took us closer to 3hrs to get outta there, sometimes that just happens. It’s a pretty fun spur but needs a bit of clearing in parts. We made the rd by 8pm and luckily some locals offered us a lift into Harrietville where we made dinner by only a few mins!

​Would totally recommend this (almost) loop. You get to see some of the best mountains in Victoria. It’s definitely a hard hike with a lot of ascent/descent, but you could make it easier by taking more days. x
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