One Down, Six to Go

Today, we conquered one of the Seven Summits of the world. Our hardy band of explorers risked life and limb and weathered considerable hardship to slog to the top of the dreaded, fabeled, revered, killer-peak known as Mount Kosciuzsko, the tallest mountain on the Australian continent.

Impressed? Well, you shouldn't be really. Kozzie is the lowest of the so-called Seven Summits; it's only 2228 meters, about 7200 feet. And the "climb" starts at about 1900 meters, the point where you get off the cushy chairlift from the ski resort of Thredbo to begin your "assault". I saw fat 70-year-olds on the "peak". Really, it's just a pleasant 3-hour stroll through some pretty, alpine land, with just a couple of steep spots making you huff and puff a bit. The biggest hazards on a nice day like today are sunburn and the flies -- and the stiff breezes even kept the biting flies at bay, so that was nice.

To further detract from the "accomplishment," some geological spoilsports don't even count Kozzie as the tallest summit on the Australian continent. They lump Australia and the island of New Guinea into one continent called, unoriginally, "Australia-New Guinea". (Probably a good call geologically; Australia and New Guinea were attached until about 10,000 years ago.) And on the Indonesian western half of the island (Papua-New Guinea controls the eastern half) is a mountain called Puncak Jaya that is about 5000 meters high -- TWICE as high as Kozzie.

And at that, Kozzie isn't even the highest mountain in lands controlled by the Commonwealth of Australia! Some place called Heard Island, an uninhabited volcanic island in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, has Mawson Peak at 2745 meters (about 8900 feet).

But I'll stick by my claim to have conquered one of the Seven Summits. Naturally, it will take a while to work up to Everest... so keep reading for progress on that.