Kozzie - Thursday, January 3

Up fairly early this morning to climb the mountain.  Of course David won't let us take the chairlift up.  He wants us to earn it.  We climb through a beautiful forest for one hour and twenty minutes to get to the top of the chairlift (would have taken 10 minutes on the lift).  Imagine my surprise when a Wallaby jumps out onto the trail about 50 feet from us!  I only saw him (or her) take 2 hops before it disappeared into the bushes.  It made my whole day!  At the top of the chairlift the trail leveled off for our walk to the summit.  It was a gorgeous sunny day, and many many people were on the trail.  We followed it for another hour and twenty minutes and summited at 11:40 a.m.  As most of you know this was our fifth of the seven summits!  We took pictures and had a snack of cold pizza before heading down.  There was a little wind on the summit, but only enough to keep most of the annoying flies off of us while we ate.  On the way back down we took another trail back to the village via Deadhorse Gap.  Lots of standing dead trees here.  The fire came very close to Thredbo but didn't burn any buildings here.  We got back around 4:00.  Later David informed me that we hiked 30 km today - that's about 18 miles!!  No wonder my legs and feet are so tired.  Hooray!  We did it!