Mt Blackboy is not the most exciting mountain I have climbed, but it’s there on the Peak Baggers’ List, so I wanted to see what it was like. I led a group of people who had never walked offtrack before (club walk) – who didn’t even quite know the meaning of the word – so that was a little disquieting, but they coped fine, and I think it was a great little mountain to introduce people to moving through untracked bushland. Poor Kai is off to buy himself a pair of gaiters! They all agreed that far more coordination and balance are required for that kind of work. Hopefully, they all gained a sense of achievement at attaining their first such summit.
My maps app said the fastest way to Mathinna from Launceston is to go via Fingal, and I decided it was correct, based on how VERY long it took me using back roads last time. Despite holdups due to a car race, as well as roadworks, we were still there in under two hours, as compared with two hours thirty using the “shortcut”. From Mathinna I headed mostly north, using Dilgers Hill Road to go around the top of Mathinna Falls (in a westerly direction at that time). Once we could clearly see Blackboy, I just headed for it, choosing a road that edged around its eastern side. You could follow this road further than I did, but there was a bit of fallen timber, and I didn’t want to hit a dead end and then have to back a long distance, so I parked early, and we were all happy to get more walking for the drive. Even with the longer walk, and with people who took the bush pretty slowly, we were both up and down in a bit under half an hour (each direction). The roads I was on were not on the map, which is why my blue track appears to start in the middle of nowhere.
