MEINCKE OF THE MOUNT:
FEATHERTOP GURU BREAKS VOW OF SILENCE

By Greg Shepherd (reprinted from The Hosteller, Winter 1983)

The annual winter time pilgrimage to the summit of Feathertop has become something of an institution in YHA Bushwalking circles. Bruce Meincke, patriarch, mentor, gentle science teacher and guru of bushwalking has been involved in the trips since 1968 (for those of you with failing memories that was when the Beatles - an English pop group - released "Abbey Road"). Then they used to go up in October, but since 1972 the trips have taken place in early June. Bruce himself has been leading them for the last eight years.

Q. I guess you must know Feathertop pretty well. How many times would you say you've been up there?
A. Oh, I suppose I've made about thirty winter trips. I guess, including summer trips, I've stood on the summit about fifty times. But don't talk about me, it's the trip itself which is important.

Q. Why do you say that?
A. Because it gives experience to people who have never camped in the snow before. It's a preliminary trip to the many snow-shoeing and cross country skiing trips YHA Bushwalking runs in winter time.

Q. Why do you think Feathertop is a worthwhile venue for giving people this sort of introduction?
A. Well, there's a defined track all the way up the Bungalow Spur giving easy access to the mountain on a reasonably gentle grade. if there's a change in the weather you can be off the mountain in a couple of hours.

Q. In your opinion how does it compare to the Staircase Spur up Bogong?
A. Bogong is a much harder slog. And the track there is much less defined. The beauty of Feathertop is that you can have medium walkers or even beginners along.

Q. Does taking people who are perhaps new to bushwalking and unused to alpine winter conditions create problems?
A. I'll say it does. They have to make sure they bring good waterproofs and warm clothes along. They can find out what's required by checking out equipment lists on the Bushies notice board at Clubnight on Monday. Crikey, some people have turned up for the trip in runners and plastic raincoats!

Q. That sounds a bit suspicious to me. What other gear do you generally take?
A. Well, I usually take snowshoes up. It's a good track for snow-shoeing, you can leave most of the larrikins on Langlaufs behind on the tight corners through the forests. And I take an iceaxe along as well. When the conditions are right, I've taken a few bushwalkers out to practise glissading and ice-axe arrests on Little Feathertop and Feathertop itself.

Q. Do many people bring skis along?
A. Oh, yes. Being the first winter trip you get a lot of cross country enthusiasts itching to hop into their Telemarks and so on. But the mountain is generally too steep for good skiing. If you want to ski up to Feathertop, the best approach is via the Razorback track in from Hotham.

Q. What other routes are used, by YHA Bushwalking?
A. Well, over the last few years we've generally had a party follow the North-West Spur up to the summit. Kevin Maddigan generally leads that trip. Cripes, they got into strife two years ago.

Q. Could you tell us a little about that trip?
A. I think Lloyd Hetrick, Derek Visser and Bruce Paule were with Kevin then. They had to blaze a trail through snow drifts of up to three feet. We had a lot of trouble ourselves on the Bungalow Spur and we had a party of almost forty, so we could swap the leader breaking trail fairly frequently. By the time we got to Feathertop Hut, that's about five and half thousand feet altitude, most of our tribe were ready to flake out anywhere. A few, mostly those with skis or snowshoes, went further up to Federation Hut and spent a cold night in there, though one brave soul, can't remember who it was now, still had the energy to build himself an igloo.
On the Sunday morning there was a pretty savage wind blowing across the main approach to the summit, visibility was down to about a hundred metres and the snow above six thousand feet was just ice. Needless to say, we didn't get anyone on the summit that year. Kevin's group spent a night freezing in the MUMC Hut and charged back down the mountain along the North-West Spur.

Q. Are there any other trips that stick out in your memory?
A. Lots. I couldn't tell you the years though. All the seasons tend to blend into one another. Last year (1982) everyone got to the summit, as I recall. That was a good year but, of course, as everyone knows, a bad season for snowfalls.

Q. In your time on the mountain have you seen many changes?
A. Unfortunately, yes. For a start the track has been steadily widened over the years. These days you could just about drive a coach up there. Horses have done a fair bit of damage to the area around the track, mainly contributing to localised soil erosion. And the area around the Federation Hut looks like a bomb crater as far as I'm concerned, with all the fire places established there. You don't see much of the damage in winter time, under a blanket of snow, but, by gee , you see it in the summer time. When I first went up there it was just about the grassiest and most scenic spot in the Victorian Alps.

Q. And when was that?
A. Oh, I couldn't tell you.

It was true: he couldn't tell me. As Bruce smiled once more and relapsed into a gentle, mystic silence, I caught a gleam in his eye. He was thinking of Feathertop, the untracked vistas of snow, cornices advancing over the main ridge like endlessly breaking ocean waves, the adrenalin-surging iceaxe arrests on the North Face, and the precipitous plunge of Hellfire Gully. Bruce will be back up there this winter, but how long this fragile landscape will remain unspoiled by the ugly blight of ski lifts, giggling gluwein spilling snow-bunnies and aspiring merchant bankers with two-word vocabularies of "amazing" and "totally amazing" is a matter for serious contemplation.
Under the matted brown foliage of Bruce's tersely clipped locks, I noticed a strand or two of silvery grey starting to seep through. Why, there couldn't be many more than fifty or sixty Feathertop trips left in his wizened hide. There was a pre-possessing quietness about this great souled man that reminded me of another leader of a far off country in a far off time. Suffice it to say that had Richard Attenborough been on last year's Feathertop trip, he would have found his Gandhi in YHA Bushwalking's own Mahatma Meincke.

Postscript:
Horses have now been banned from using the Bungalow Spur track.

PPS: 20 years on, Bruce is still leading snow-walks up Mt Feathertop