Tourism infrastructure such as walking tracks can have negative effects on vegetation including in mountain regions. In the alpine area around continental Australia's highest mountain, Mt Kosciuszko (2228m), there is a range of walking tracks (paved, gravel and raised steel mesh surfaces) in addition to an extensive network of informal/non-hardened tracks. Vegetation characteristics were compared between track types on/under tracks, on the track verge, and in the adjacent native vegetation. For a raised steel mesh walkway there was no difference in vegetation under the walkway, on the verge, and 3m away. In contrast, for a non-hardened track there was 35% bare ground on the track surface but no other detectable impacts. Gravel and paved tracks had distinct verges largely comprising bare ground and exotic species. For non-hardened tracks there was an estimated 270m 2 of disturbance per km of track. For wide gravel tracks the combined area of bare ground, exotic plants and gravel was estimated as 4290m 2 per km, while for narrow gravel tracks it was estimated as 2940m 2 per km. For paved tracks there was around 2680m 2 per km of damage. In contrast, there was no detectable effect of raised steel mesh walkway on vegetation highlighting some of the benefits of this surface over other track types.