After a pretty lazy Christmas Meg and I decided we should do something a bit more active for New Years Eve.

So we headed up to the Snowies for two days or so. We basically just did the Lakes Walk, over two days and two nights, and added a bit of a detour around the west side of Kosi and up Mt Stillwell.

On the first night we camped below Kosi, just around from Wilkinsons Creek. It was a great spot for watching the sun slowly dip down, we watched it all the way to the horizon, and then marked the occasion with a bit of Port out of a plastic bottle.

After many attempts I finally got a decent panorama, from a perch up on a rock. It’s best viewed full size, or if you view it on Google+ you can pan around.

The second day we walked around the western side of Kosi, and then up the south west flank to end up above the Lake Cootapatamba cornice. It’s not an area you usually get to, so it was really nice to have the time to explore it. Although there were a few scrubby bits, on the whole it was pretty easy going as long as you chose your route carefully.

After bagging the peak and running away to avoid the crowds, we had a nice lunch at the Snowy river. Then there was the inevitable trudge down the Kosciuszko road to Charlotte Pass.

Althought we’d parked there, we ignored the car and instead headed straight up Mt Stillwell. There’s a new looking track, that I don’t remember from previous trips, which makes it quite an easy walk.

After a bit of hunting around to find a spot out of the wind we put the tent up just a few metres below the summit and settled in. We cooked dinner and watched the sun go down, again with a splash of plasticky-port.

There was no attempt made to stay up until midnight, the real objective was to wake up for the sunrise. As it turned out that wasn’t all that hard, sleeping outside under the stars you wake up pretty easily when it starts getting light.

Luckily it was a superb sunrise, with some low cloud over the Monaro and the full disc of the sun appearing. Just half an hour later it clouded over, so we were pretty lucky to see it!