I'd already climbed Mount Kosciuszko several times, but until June 2025 I'd only experienced Australia's highest mountain in much easier conditions.

In summer, Kosciuszko can be little more than a walk along a boardwalk.

I wanted to climb it in winter.

As an Australian, I've always followed what I consider the true definition of the Seven Summits: the highest point on each of the seven continents. That means Mount Kosciuszko represents Australia on my Seven Summits objective, rather than using the Messner list and substituting Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia.

I'd been skiing around Mount Hotham, Perisher and Thredbo when a beautiful winter weather window appeared.

So on June 21, 2025, I joined a group from K7 Adventures and headed back up Kosciuszko, this time on snowshoes.

We met the K7 Adventures group in Thredbo at around 7 a.m.

I was travelling solo at the time and had decided to join a group rather than head onto the mountain by myself. It turned out to be a great decision.

We caught the chairlift up the mountain, the highest lifted point in Australia, and stepped out into almost perfect winter conditions.

Blue skies, temperatures hovering around freezing and very little wind.

There was plenty of snow on the ground, so we strapped on snowshoes and started following the normal route toward Kosciuszko.

Most of the people in the group hadn't done much climbing before.

For me, it was going to be a fun winter day in the mountains.

For some of them, this was a proper mountaineering adventure.

And their excitement made the day even better.

Most of the people I was climbing with hadn’t really climbed mountains before.

That made the day even more fun.

Something that felt like a relatively relaxed winter outing to me was a genuine mountaineering adventure for some of the group.

We spent most of the route moving across the snow in snowshoes, surrounded by a completely different landscape from the Kosciuszko I’d experienced during summer.

For clothing, I kept things fairly simple. I had my Arc’teryx Beta shell, a down jacket underneath and my Mountain Hardwear Exposure GORE-TEX Glove.

As we approached the summit, the wind picked up slightly, but nothing serious.

Then we were standing on the highest point in Australia.

Mount Kosciuszko — 2,228 meters.

For my Seven Summits project, that’s the Australian summit.

And doing it in winter felt considerably more appropriate than walking up the boardwalk.

There wasn't much time to celebrate.

Kilimanjaro was next.

After getting back down from Kosciuszko, I jumped into the truck and began what turned into roughly a 19–20 hour drive so I could drop it off and get ready to leave Australia.

My flight was only two days later.

That effectively gave me about one day to pack for what would eventually become close to six months overseas.

The itinerary was beginning to look slightly ridiculous.

Australia → Kilimanjaro → the Alps → Pik Lenin → Nepal and Manaslu.

Kosciuszko might have been the smallest mountain on that list.

But it was where one of the biggest periods of climbing I'd ever undertaken really began.