Mount Townsend (Snowy Mountains)

For the mountain in the United States, see Mount Townsend (Washington).

Mount Townsend
Dawn on Mount Townsend, viewed from Watsons Crags, October 2011.
Highest point
Elevation	2,209 m (7,247 ft)[1]
Prominence	189 m (620 ft)[1]
Isolation	3.71 km (2.31 mi)[1]
Listing	Seven Second Summits
Coordinates	36°25′21″S 148°15′32″E[2]
Naming
Etymology	Thomas Scott Townsend
Geography
Mount Townsend Location in New South Wales
Location	Snowy Mountains, New South Wales, Australia
Parent range	Main Range, Great Dividing Range
Topo map	Youngal
Climbing
Easiest route	Hike or ski

Mount Townsend, a mountain in the Main Range of the Great Dividing Range, is located in the Snowy Mountains region of New South Wales, Australia.

With an elevation of 2,209 metres (7,247 ft) above sea level,^[1] Mount Townsend is the second-highest peak of mainland Australia. Located in Kosciuszko National Park, the mountain is 3.68 kilometres (2.29 mi) north of Australia's highest mainland peak, Mount Kosciuszko.

Although lower than Mount Kosciuszko, Mount Townsend has a more craggy peak and is arguably more dominant than the relatively round-topped Mount Kosciuszko.

The confusion about swapping the names of Mount Kosciuszko and Mount Townsend was straightened out in 1940 by B. T. Dowd,^[3] a cartographer and historian of the NSW Lands Department. His study reaffirmed that the mountain named by Strzelecki as Mount Kosciuszko was indeed, as the NSW maps had always shown, Australia's highest summit. When Macarthur's field book of the historical journey was published in 1941 by C. Daley^[4] it further confirmed Dowd's clarification. This means that Targangil, mentioned in Spencer's 1885 article,^[5] was the indigenous name of Mount Townsend, not of Mount Kosciuszko.

Mount Townsend has a prominence of only 189m which is relatively low compared to other mountains worldwide. By stricter prominence cut off points, the most common of which being the 300m prominence rule, Townsend would not be classified as its own mountain, and instead a subsidiary peak. Due to Australia's much flatter topography than all other continents, a prominence cut off point of 300m is almost never used, cartographers opting instead for less strict definitions, such as 50m or 100m when classifying peaks. If using the 300m rule this makes Mount Bogong in Victoria the second highest mountain.

See also

• Australian Alps
• List of mountains of Australia
• Second Seven Summits

References

1. "Mount Townsend". Peakbagger.com. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
2. "Mount Townsend". Geographical Names Register (GNR) of NSW. Geographical Names Board of New South Wales. Retrieved 27 May 2015.
3. Dowd, B.T. The Cartography of Mount Kosciusko. Royal Australian Historical Society. Journal & Proceedings, vol. 26, part I, pp. 97-107
4. C. Daley Count Paul Strzelecki’s Ascent of Mount Kosciusko and Journey through Gippsland The Victorian Historical Magazine, vol.19, no 2, pp. 41-53, 1941
5. " M. Spencer The Highest Point in Australia The Sydney Morning Herald, February 18, 1885",