The Definitive Ranking of Australia’s 16 Highest Peaks – We WON’T Be Taking Questions

All 16 of the country’s highest points can be bagged on a single 60km hike through Kosciuszko National Park. But not all summits are created equal. Join Taylor as he enumerates the literal peaks and valleys at the tippy top of Australia.

We Are Explorers acknowledges that this adventure is located on the traditional Country of the Wiradjuri, Wolgalu, Ngunnawal, and Monaro Ngarigo people who have occupied and cared for the lands, waters, and their inhabitants for thousands of years. We pay our respects to them as the Traditional Custodians and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.

We live in an age of diminishing humanity. Everything indexed, codified, systematised, regulated, rigorous, and automated. The whimsy shrinks like a puddle while the science spirals outwards in a fibonacci sequence. 

To combat this, each year I ask my friends to come on a hike with me so that we can, quite literally, touch grass. In the past few years, it was to do a bit of wayfinding on the Aussie 16 peaks route.

I was curious, is capital N Nature still a place of discovery and adventure, or is it subjected to the same rigmarole of both process and progress?

It’s time we considered the vibe, baby. It’s all about the risk AND the reward. Friends, in order to know the peak we must approach it subjectively – like a diffident, metaphysical horse. We must allow ourselves to experience it not simply as a number on a topo map, but as an unstable, dynamic being. 

Once this happens, the mountain becomes something less to be conquered and more as something to commune with. And so, in that spirit, here are all of Australia’s 16 highest peaks, ranked in order of how commune-able they are; how frolickable they are; which are the most picnickable, the most interestingly historic; which are most irreverent, aesthetic, supernatural, or else just fuckin’ cool. 

16. Unnamed Peak on Etheridge Ridge

Elevation: 2,180m (5th highest)

About as inspirational as its name, we kick the list off with a literal and metaphorical stinker. With such a prominent elevation, you’d think it would sit somewhere closer to the pointy end of this list, and yet, half the smell and view of this peak is just of the toilet block below at Rawson Pass. 

I do love how the pink granite here shines in the evening alpenglow though. And there’s something absurd in me that also loves how the geological society doesn’t even bother to separate the peak from the ridge (more on pedantic geology later). 

They’re all winners, but some are definitely bigger winners than others.

15. Mount Kosciuszko

Elevation: 2,228m (highest)

*Extremely aggressive wind rippling noise*

This mountain embodies the feeling of an existential crisis. The name Kosciuszko alone is spelled with an errant Z to reflect its anglicised pronunciation (KOZ-ee-US-koh), instead of Kosciusko (kosh-CHYUUSH-koh), which is the name it was first given by the Polish explorer Sir Paweł Edmund Strzelecki. 

And if you’re wondering why it doesn’t have a dual-Indigenous name, it’s because nobody could agree on what the Indigenous name should be. The name Kunama Namadgi (meaning ‘snow mountain’ in some Ngarigo languages) was floated in 2019, but then it was tabled because the word ‘kunama’ means faeces in another of ‘at least six different Indigenous groups that should be part of the conversation’.

Apart from its name, you’d think that Kosciuszko – given its claim as the highest peak on the entire continent – would flirt with the majestic, would be a life-altering experience of the antipodes. And perhaps it is for some who tread the extremely well-manicured, gently inclining road-into-boardwalk from the car park. 

But I maintain that once you’ve experienced the solitude, reward, or the simple feeling of doing something different that accompanies the summit of virtually any other peak on the Main Range, the decision to make Kosciuszko so questionably accessible starts to weigh heavier on your mind. 

There’s no doubt that some dubious over-engineering has occurred on the path to the summit, and on the way there one can’t help but wonder whether all of the metal boardwalks and paving – which were built to control erosion and increase accessibility – are worth how much they diminish the experience of summiting Australia’s highest mountain. 

Read more: ‘Are Australia’s Walking Tracks Being Over-Engineered?

14. Carruthers Peak

Elevation: 2,145m (tied 9th highest)

Always tickle the trig point

Named for former NSW Premier Joseph Carruthers who (while Minister of Lands) facilitated the building of the summit road to the top of Mount Kosciuszko, we can in a way trace everything hate-able about Kosci back to this dude. 

He loathed progressive politics and income taxes so much that he founded the party that became Australia’s Liberal Party. His staunch, un-nuanced views on free trade and profit-driven ideologies were almost certainly what led him to think that a road up to the highest mountain in Australia was a good idea.

This is the only peak you can hit without ever having to step foot off the Main Range Track, which, ironically, is probably just as Carruthers would’ve wanted it. 

The steel mesh boardwalk, (also known as the cheese grater) turns into stone steps that lead to the summit, which is denoted by a red geological trig point stone thingy, a small lookout towards Watsons Crag, and probably about 30 to 40 other hikers if you’re there on a weekend. The nicest thing I can say for Carruthers Peak is that it gets good phone reception.

13. Mount Lee

Elevation: 2,106m (15th highest)

A clear view of the old trail being rehabilitated

To be honest I thought this one would grace the bottom of the list, since Mt Lee is sandwiched between two of the more prominent, showy peaks on the Main Range: Northcote and Carruthers. But with not much to speak of by way of prominence, it’s a short, uneventful walk up to the peak, where you’re afforded essentially the exact same view as its two neighbours, but also obstructed by those neighbours.

This would lead you to believe that Lee is insignificant by all accounts, as even its un-traceable nominative history suggests that whoever it was named after isn’t worth remembering. 

But it turns out that the cheese grater in this section has replaced a former track in order to rehabilitate the critically endangered, and admittedly subtle, windswept feldmark – one of Australia’s rarest and most endangered ecosystems. So demure that it might just be worth skipping this peak altogether. 

12. Mount Du Faur

Elevation: 2,149m (8th highest)

Taking the unnecessarily hard route

A soft spoken summit named for Frederick Eccleston Du Faur, a man that time seems to have completely forgotten. His work mapping and surveying the area at the turn of the century made him one of the earliest advocates for the preservation of the Snowies. He also randomly helped fund the first expedition to Antarctica.

The grassy summit is a short jaunt from the nearby Abbott Peak, and given Du Faur’s former name of ‘Byatts Camp’ (another anonymous victim of time) you can see why its plateau-ness probably made it a decent stockman’s camp. I’ve enjoyed the expansive view over the Geehi Valley every time I’ve visited this place, and have always wanted to camp up here. It’s nice. Pour four out for Du Faur.

11. Abbott Peak

Elevation: 2,145m (tied 9th highest)

Looking at the easy route to Du Faur

This is the first peak on the list that has a fun, albeit short, technical ascent. It’s mostly about following chutes of grass to the top, but a bit of problem solving is required to negotiate some of the boulder sections, and a nice view of Wilkinsons Cirque at the summit makes it worth the haul.

An egregious amount of sleuthing has led to me to discover that Abbott Peak is named for J.P. Abbott who was minister of mines back in the 1880s. This is because an Austrian zoologist named Robert von Lendenfield – who remains renowned in the modern day for his groundbreaking research on sea sponges – climbed this peak in 1885, falsely concluding that its neighbour (Townsend) was the highest. 

Intending to publish these erroneous findings, he had to send them to the current minister of mines, J.P. Abbott, so, to presumably curry a bit of favour, he named this peak after Abbott, ‘whose liberality and protection of scientific research demands the esteem and gratitude of every scientific man’. Take me back to Du Faur, already.

10. Mt Northcote

Elevation: 2,131m (12th highest)

Approaching from the east

I started climbing this peak thinking I’d hop on the 86 tram for a $13 banh mi and some Temu vintage shops, so you can imagine my surprise when the only thing at the top was a small rock cairn. Just kidding. That infamous Melbourne suburb is named for Stafford Henry Northcote, whereas this mountain is named after his son: Henry Stafford Northcote.

For real I do like Mt Northcote. It’s probably the best 360º view in all of Australia – as you can gaze equally across to Twynam, Kosciuszko, Moraine Pass, and down to Lake Albina. Given that it’s right in the middle of it all, a pretty short and uneventful jaunt up from the track sort of cheapens how special this one actually is. There’s no real way to approach the summit that gives it the payoff and appreciation it deserves.

Read more: 10 Tips For Your First Off-Track Hike

9. Little Twynam

Elevation: 2,120m (14th highest)

Li’l Twy-Twy, as the locals call it, is a rocky affair that occurs downslope from its bigger brother. It’s nothing to be sniffed at though, and the camping around this area trends superlative, as both sunrise and sunset manifest themselves on the illuminated slate walls of the glacial cirque; the litho-stratified quartz shining like a full moon in the vacuous granitic outcrops, the great yawn of your life ranging before you as the galaxy above stretches and wheels away on a cold night where existential clarity enters you like a shiver, where nothing’s gained nor lost because the end of one thing is always simply the beginning of another (since this is probably either the first or last peak you hit, depending on which way you do the route).

Note: Camping isn’t allowed in drinking water and alpine lake catchments, check the rules before you go.

8. Mt Clarke

Elevation: 2,101m (16th highest)

I still dream about how perfect this cloud was

Proof that small can be mighty. I actually love how uneventful the summit of Mt Clarke is. In fact, I’m still not even sure we were at the summit. It’s basically a field. 

No, what I love about Clarke is mostly the approach over Moraine Pass – an appropriately named geological feature – which is probably as close as I’ll ever come to walking on a glacier. Something about its impertinence, its arrangement, is undeniable. 

The views from this pass down to the ruins of Kunama Hut evoke halcyon memories of a time when the area was so snowed-in during winter that a cornice here splintered and triggered the only deadly avalanche in Australia’s history.

Experiences, like ratings, are relative; but I tend to relate more to unrelatable experiences. You know? And if I had to guess, due to Clarke’s proximity to higher and more accessible peaks, it’s probably one of the least visited peaks on this list. The clouds on this particular visit were unreal.

7. Muellers Peak

Elevation: 2,129m (13th highest)

Walking towards the approach at golden hour

Overlooking both the Main Range and Wilkinsons Cirque, this extremely aesthetic peak has one of my favorite lunch spots in Australia. Just below its bouldered summit are a patchwork of mercifully soft and sunny grass spots that remain sheltered from the near-constant northwesterly winds throughout the day. I’ve been sunburned on this peak on cloudy days, it’s amazing.

Part of what makes a peak so memorable though is the ascent, and climbing Muellers Peak from the north side means you pass by the bogs and fens that drain into Wilkinsons Creek. Treading very lightly through this area, the keen observer can spot some of the wildest flora in Australia: Drosera arcturi AKA the carnivorous alpine sundews.

As far as nomenclature goes, this peak’s name is a decent one to get behind, as it was named after the German-Australian botanist Ferdinand Von Mueller, who classified a bunch of plants in the region. He was also the first director of Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens and created the also-very-cool herbarium that remains there today. 

There are some campsites around this peak that, on a jackpot of a windless evening, would be life-changing. Get up there!

6. Rams Head

Elevation: 2,190m (4th highest)

Not sure if that hat ever actually went on his head for the whole hike

A chunk of wayfinding, plus a fun scramble negotiating some grass chutes really scratches that itch for a bit of the unorthodox. Rounding the final hill at the summit, the views all the way back to Victoria are unmatched on a nice day. The trig point here is nice and wabi-sabi; it looks like it’s been buffeted by a century of constant gale force winds, because it probably has.

My assumption has always been that the name of this peak makes more sense if you’re approaching it from the west, but I also think most people only hit it coming from the east off the Main Range Track. In that spirit, hiking up here from the western trailhead at Dead Horse Gap is my best recommendation for the nonconformist’s day hike in Kosciuszko.

5. Alice Rawson Peak

Elevation: 2,160m (7th highest)

Gazing back towards Lake Albina and Kosciuszko

The approach to this summit, which passes through some otherworldly rock gullies and rolling tussocks, is what I think makes it particularly special. You feel like you’re walking on this liminal ridgeline towards the end of the hardscrabble earth. And then you get to this peak at the edge of it all and you’re basically staring straight down into Lake Albina.

Alice Rawson Peak is cool because it’s the only one on this list named after a woman – even if she was the largely anonymous daughter of a NSW governor for whom no real biographical information exists. Apart from also having the toilets at the pass named after her, she held no real connection to Kosciuszko, so the epithet was a political commemoration and not much else.

Anyways there’s a tonne of amazing camping near the peak, and many signs of deer and maybe even a brumby or two.

4. Tenison Woods Knoll

Elevation: 2,136m (11th highest)

Sometimes I forget I’m in Australia

Just in case you were also dying to know: the difference between a mountain and a knoll is almost entirely subjective. I know we all have this feeling like we know what a knoll is, or a hill, an eminence, a hillock, a knob, a bald, a monticle. But even dictionary.com only ambiguously defines a hill as ‘a natural elevation of the earth’s surface, smaller than a mountain’, and a knoll as a ‘small hill’. There’s no formal distinction, no hard and fast number that sets these formations apart. A mountain is a hill is a knoll is a knob is whatever you want it to be, because again, it’s all about vibes baby. 

I like to keep this in mind when visiting the summit of Tenison Woods Knoll, because to me it’s a crying shame that the nice priest/geologist/botanist who spent most of his life collecting and taxonomising various Australian flora only got a ‘knoll’ named after him. You’ll always be a mountain to me, buddy.

The approach to this summit is also my favourite of the entire list, as there’s this unnamed pass on the southeast side that looks back towards Alice Rawson Peak and its surrounding crags, while a small, braided stream seems to hang in thin air before it drops down out of sight. You’d be forgiven for thinking you were on a glacier in the Swiss Alps or something crazy.

3. Mount Twynam

Elevation: 2,195m (3rd highest)

Yes they are Montbell Tachyon pants and I cherish them deeply

Big Twy-twy, as the locals call it. I’ve summited this mountain at least three different ways now and they’ve all been equally cool. The easiest way is naturally from the Main Range, and it’s indeed lovely to watch the landscapes across to Charlotte Pass and Kangaroo Ridge unspooling like a golden ribbon in afternoon light. I admit that I like looking at Twynam from Blue Lake as much as I like looking at Blue Lake from Twynam. They’re two of the most drastic features in all of Australia and they’re right next to each other. 

The fact that this summit is well off the Main Range Track also means that it’s much less busy – and you can really feel that, especially if you’re visiting here earlier or later in the day. 

Similar to its little brother, half the special-ness of Twynam is gazing to the west just like all your ancestors probably did at some point, and being struck with that liminal feeling of suddenly being between things, of being out there, of being obliged to take stock of your life and all your choices as you enumerate all the peaks that you just did, or else are about to do.

2. Mount Townsend

Elevation: 2,209m (2nd highest)

Always wake up for the sunrise hike, you won’t regret it

Famously the subject of one of the greatest cartographical blunders in history, this peak was actually thought to be the highest point in Australia for a time. In a way, this debacle kind of ironically embodies the lack of connection that many of the first Europeans had to this place, as though it were simply something to be conquered and categorised, and not to cohabitate with. 

Similarly, I find it interesting that this summit has a recorded Indigenous name of Targangil (meaning ‘Bogong moth’ in some Ngarigo languages), and yet there hasn’t been any public discourse around renaming it. Perhaps this is because a nearby peak, Jagungal (a different anglicisation of the same word) bears the same name. Or perhaps it’s because we only have space to care about the most superlative, visibly online peaks. 

It makes me a little sad because the ascent to Townsend is so amazing anyway you cut it. It’s a long way up the glacial valley of Wilkinsons Cirque (or even longer if you were crazy enough to start at the Hannels Spur Trailhead), passing by countless alpine streams and cascades until the saddle gives way to soft and steep grassy chutes before a technical, but manageable, boulder scramble dumps you at the summit.

The views from Townsend on a clear day are the best in Australia. The reward is nonpareil. The world would be a different place if everyone, at least once in their lives, had to wake up freezing cold at 4am to hit the peak for sunrise.

1. Rams Head North

Elevation: 2,177m (6th highest)

This makes it look way easier than it is

The most fun peak to hit with the most uncontroversial name, you knew it had to be Rams Head North. A rolling, offtrail approach across the tussock plains gives way to an unruly scramble up the rocky facade of this peak. Pick your route wisely, as there are some hand-over-foot technical parts, until suddenly you’ll pull yourself up on top of two huge boulders that protrude like demonic horns from this crazy summit. 

It’s the only one on the list that I’d insist on doing without a pack, and even then some of the scramble still requires a fair amount of negotiation.

There’s no way to summit this peak without having a little bit of skill with wayfinding, route planning, and common sense. So, that being said, Rams Head North is by no means for everyone. 

But if I’ve learned anything from my years on this mortal coil, it’s that sometimes when you try to please everyone you please no-one. So in that spirit, here’s to the next century of more thoughtful names, less profit-driven conservation decisions, more sea sponges, fewer ministries for mines, and as many meaningful and positive experiences with nature we can manage.

And re-visiting places with your friends because it’s fun to share adventures