On 18 June 2005, John and I traversed up the Bungalow Spur after the first snowfall of 2005 to visit the newly built Federation Hut near Mount Feathertop.

We set off from the car park at 7:30am, our spirits buoyed by the absence of an expected downpour. We hiked up a never-ending steep uphill track, crossed the snowline at 1200m ASL and forced our way through almost knee-deep snow thereafter. We safely arrived at the fabulous Federation Hut at 11:30am after 4 hours of exhaustive hiking. We had a browse through the interesting comments in the logbook, followed by a reasonably sumptuous lunch. We decided wisely to head back to the car park and not to attempt on the summit of Mount Feathertop due to lack of daylight hours and incipient snow storm.

We slipped and skated on the icy surface along the Bungalow Spur back to the car in 2 hours time, meeting a group of 7 hikers along the way. Turned out we got a lot to thank them for because their combined footsteps compacted the soft snow and made our return journey much easier.