It may have taken 10 weeks, but winter finally remembered the Snowy Mountains when earlier this week the first real chilly blast of 2026 whipped across the high country.
While the storm and subsequent blizzard brought less snow than predicted, they were a timely reminder of why the Snowy Mountains are dotted with emergency shelters.
The network of huts across the high country has saved lives. Most were originally built for miners, stockmen and Snowy Hydro workers, but their role changed with the creation of Kosciuszko National Park. Today, these huts are remote refuges - and sometimes lifesavers.
Some are well known. Cootapatamba, for instance, is hard to miss, with its chimney poking through the snow like a giant red snorkel.
But there was another shelter, beside one of the Snowies' most spectacular lakes, that had a remarkably short life and has disappeared from memory.
I'm referring to the Lake Albina Emergency Shelter.
Regular readers may recall that earlier this year I highlighted the former Lake Albina Lodge, a two-storey alpine eyrie perched beside the lake from 1951 until its controversial removal in 1983 amid environmental concerns.
Once the lodge was demolished, adventurers crudely fashioned a makeshift survival shelter into its foundations. National Parks eventually blew that away with explosives as part of the push to return the area to wilderness.
But removing the lodge created a problem.
The building may have offended wilderness purists, but it was also a refuge in one of the most inhospitable corners of the Australian Alps.
So, in a compromise, park authorities installed a tiny emergency shelter nearby.
And when I say tiny, I mean tiny.
The shelter was never intended to replace the old lodge. Far from it. It wasn't somewhere to cook dinner or spend a comfortable night. It was a last-resort survival pod - somewhere to crawl into if a blizzard rolled across the Main Range and things went seriously pear-shaped.
Constructed from corrugated metal and insulation tubing, the structure sat close to the ground to minimise its visual impact. It was an insulated metal tube, just large enough for a few people to squeeze inside.
Hardly the Ritz.
Conditions inside the little pod seem to have been as inhospitable as the weather outside. Because it was so small and poorly ventilated, moisture from occupants' breath quickly froze onto the interior walls. One skier described the inside as being "like a freezer badly in need of defrosting". Brrr!
The pod did, however, come in handy for a group of back-country adventurers, but not for its original purpose as shelter.
In winter 1984, after climbing Mount Kosciuszko, John Anderson and three companions were skiing back towards Lake Albina when cloud and snow reduced visibility. Their ski tracks disappeared and the landscape became a "deathly quiet, still, featureless world", Anderson wrote in an account published in the Kosciuszko Huts Association archive.
Then, at about 4pm, a "vague grey apparition" appeared through the murk.
Expecting a granite boulder, they skied towards the ghostly outline, only to discover the emergency shelter.
It helped them determine exactly where they were.
They took a compass bearing but despite the appalling weather conditions, snubbed the opportunity to spend a night inside the pod.
"We chose to put up our tents as it would be warmer and not nearly as claustrophobic," John wrote.
So, for all its shortcomings, at least in this case it had proved useful in helping four disorientated skiers find their bearings.
Then there's Steve Allen of Charnwood, who before it was demolished would often spend up to 60 days a year at Lake Albina Lodge and was one of the first to check out the emergency shelter. He was far from impressed and dubbed it a "dog box".
"There's absolutely no way I'd sleep in it - it was like a tomb," he recalls.
Steve also remembers graffiti plastered across its exterior, including "RIP Eric Bedford" - reflecting the sentiments some back-country users expressed towards Bedford's political career over his decision as NSW planning and environment minister to approve the removal of the much-loved lodge.
Oh, and the pod had another serious flaw. Sitting so low to the ground, despite its chimney entrance, it could easily disappear beneath drifting snow, making it difficult to find when skiers needed it most.
Ultimately, the survival shelter pleased nobody. It was too cramped to be a comfortable refuge, yet its very existence sat awkwardly with the 'wilderness' philosophy that had seen the old Lake Albina Lodge removed. Within just a few years, it too was gone. And that, perhaps, explains why so few people today know it ever existed.
Unlike the better-known Snowy Mountains huts, the Lake Albina Emergency Shelter left barely a footprint. It had no fireplace, no bunks and no romantic tales of stockmen. Just a short stint as a corrugated-metal survival pod, sitting almost anonymously beside one of Australia's most spectacular alpine lakes.
Yet for a time, that strange little structure could have been the difference between life and death.
So, the next time a blizzard blows across the Main Range - like the one earlier this week - spare a thought for the little coffin-sized "dog box" that once crouched beside Lake Albina: a forgotten shelter built for the simplest of purposes, keeping someone alive when the mountains turned nasty.
While David Wardle never had to seek shelter in the Lake Albina Emergency Shelter (thank goodness!), he recalls "getting a stamp in his book" after staying at Lake Albina Lodge.
"Your recent columns brought back so many memories - skiing into Mawsons Hut in the full moon, struggling to get to a water source from Schlink Hilton after a heavy snowfall and many others, however it was the latest on Lake Albina that really brought back memories," he reveals.
"In the 1970s there were many Europeans who had fond memories of being able to walk from youth hostel to youth hostel that in most European countries were only a day's walk apart, however in Australia the YHA hostels were few and far between," David explains.
"In the Snowies it was possible to walk from the Thredbo Youth Hostel via Hannels Spur to the small stone hut on the banks of the Swampy Plain River that was also maintained by YHA through the Kosciuszko Huts Association. With Lake Albina Lodge in between, looked after by the Ski Tourers' Association, it made a great three-day walk over the Australia Day long weekend that became quite a YHA tradition for several years.
"The stamp from my little hostel book shows that I was there!" he exclaims.
David would like to know if anyone else remembers the little rubber stamps that backpackers collected in their YHA book as a record of where they had travelled.
"I've got hundreds as a record of an enthusiastic traveller from Australia and around the world," he says.
Rating: Easy
Cryptic Clue: 57 Bronze
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to tym@iinet.net.au. The first correct email received after 10am, Saturday August 15 wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Last week: Congratulations to Jacqui Corkhill of Red Hill who was the first reader to correctly identify last week's photo as the carpet at the Kingston Hotel in Griffith. Jacqui beat a host of other readers, including Frances McGee of Curtin, Geoffrey McDougall of O'Connor and David Alder of Jerrabomberra.
This column's recent photo of the closed bakery at Blayney, complete with a sign promoting its "sandwitches", found its way all the way to the Central West NSW town, where several locals admitted they'd never noticed the faux pas.
"I walk past all the time and never ever noticed," reports Cheryl Toohey.
Meanwhile, Rebecca S reports: "If you look closely ... at the 't', there is a [drawing of a] witch above it."
Denise Hutchison, who operated the bakery from 2016 to 2024, explains the origins of the unusual "correction".
"I bought the bakery and never noticed [the typo] until I sat outside in my car one day and thought, 'What the...?'"
It turns out "the old owner got the signs done by a company in Orange who spelt it wrong, and their way of fixing it was to stick a witch on it," explains Denise, who now operates a bakery across the road, where a steady stream of people have queued up - presumably on broomsticks - over the past two weeks to have a laugh about their town's now-infamous sign.
Meanwhile, David Berman of Weetangera recently spotted "sandwishes" advertised on a menu in Lisbon.
"Sandwishes sound much more intriguing and appealing [than sandwitches]," he muses.
I tend to agree.
CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601
