Tag: bushwalk

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Jubilee 2013 Dec

Mt Jubilee Dec 2013

Richea scoparia from Mt Jubilee

Isophysis tasmanica
Having driven down from Launceston in a slow bus with several long stops, and having slightly misinterpreted instructions on how to get to the start of the walk (roads not being on the map), we were not ready to set out on our little trek until a fairly disastrous 11.25 – almost time for lunch, especially for this hungry person who had had breakfast at 5 a.m. This did not augur well for making our destination, and all my misgivings were realised as I saw how far we hadn’t got when we did have our midday meal.

 In fact, I feared that we weren’t even going to make Mt Jubilee, let alone the further high point of the Jubilee Range, the stated goal. Was a mass of dense melaleuca and bauera scrub to be our final destination? Would we get up to a view? Happily, the answer to the first question is “no”, and the second is “yes”. We did summit Mt Jubilee at least, and thereby gained a glorious vista. The club did not, however, do the times said in the book, and needed 2 hrs 30 mins plus breaks to get up (four hours in total), a bit less (and fewer breaks) to get down. Everybody adored the expansive views and the spacious feeling on the summit, to say nothing of the splendid scoparia in flower in numerous pockets up the top. I loved the rocky outcrops with their hippy lichen hair dangling as well. We stayed on top a lovely long time, absorbing this wonderful view, and having the names of the surrounding peaks pointed out for us by people who are far better than I am at recognising old friends from different angles. This mountain is not high enough to be an Abel; not even of enough interest to the point-allocation powers that be to be worth a single point, but it is a wonderful mountain, and one I would love to sleep on for the splendour of its views and for what my imagination can picture it must be like at sundown. Next time I want to be there with my proper pack and tent.

Getting nearer. Up on the high ridge with views at last.

 

Instructions on how to find the roads that are not on the map:
first take Jubilee Rd off Styx Rd (a right hand turn). Driving along this road, there is a left turn on offer, but with a clearly visible fallen tree only about 50 metres in. Obviously, don’t take that road. Then (and especially if your instructions say “Take a left turn”) you might be tempted to take the next left, which does go somewhere. We have thoroughly explored this one for you. It does not go where you want. The third offering to the left is a Y-shaped fork, where you may now take the left hand option, and, where it seems logical in terms of your final destination, look carefully for the “cairn” (a tiny gathering of dark grey rocks, very subtle, about 15-20 cms high at this time of writing) and a couple of rather faded ribbons. It is well worth the trouble of locating this starting point, as the pad (not track – you still have to use carefully-honed observation skills to stay on it) saves a lot of time that would otherwise be wasted finding the best route through the rather tightly-knit scrub. Do not undertake the route if you are not confident of navigating, as you can’t rely on seeing the pad, and I can guarantee there will be times you need to consult map and compass in order to get yourself to your destination.
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Millers Bluff 2013 Nov

Millers Bluff Nov 2013

 

Epicurus said (a few thousand years ago – when no one had heard of Millers Bluff) that it is more important to have someone to eat with than to have something to eat. With the silly side issue of starving to death omitted, I absolutely agree. And I would add in a similar vein that, although sitting on a mountain is a wonderful thing in itself – solo or with company – it is often the case that the company we have on a mountain is more important in forming our emotional reaction to that mountain than the mount itself. I have summitted many mountains solo, but my favourite experiences are always ones where I’ve shared the mountain with like-minded friends.

And so we come to Miller’s Bluff, a bitch of a mountain, a horror fight through prickly hakea, stabbing scoparia, tangling bauera and impenetrable walls of green junk that muster superior defences to defeat our best efforts to push through it. How many minutes did we spend in our monster epic to reach the summit perched on a rock looking at a sea of attacking, knife-edged greenery wondering which would be the route for the next 20 metres that might allow us to progress to the next rock where we could do the same? The actual summit never seemed to get any closer. In a trip that covered only 16 kms, we took 14 hours 36 in total, 9 hours 41 of which were spent in movement, according to my watch. My gps says only 5 hours were spent in movement, but I guess that just means we were moving so slowly that the system failed to define what we were doing as “movement”. (I guess I didn’t stop my stop-watch every time we halted to make another terrain decision). It was the dubious progress of snails. Lunch was only short due to lack of time; we didn’t get any dinner, and snacks were few and far between. The blank time was spent a little in regrouping, and quite a lot in making decisions about how to move forward. And I was with highly experienced and competent walkers.

 

The shadows were already lengthening by the time we reached the summit, and we got to enjoy sunset from the top, as we took over two hours (in each direction) to travel the slightly more than two kilometres-long ridgeline connecting the “nearly summit” to the actual summit, a mere 2 metres higher. The descent did not begin before we had passed nearby the fake summit again. I think for a mere two metres, it would be well worth tampering with the environment and gathering a few rocks; however, the views were much better from the real summit, and my favourite views were had along the ridge line coming back to the false one. There was a lake in the distance, beautifully lit by the crepuscular rays of sunlight, and the tiers to our right made wonderful silhouettes. That was a sight well worth savouring, and luckily we had plenty of time for that. Had someone heaped rocks on summit one, all that would have been missed, as would the adventure of descending in the dark.

For me, to sit on a highpoint in the glare of the midday sun is a bit of a waste of a mountain; the fact that it took us so long that we got to see sunset from the top was a bonus. I am never going to climb this mountain again, or be in that spot in the middle of a bed of green nails at sunset again; it’s good that I’m satisfied with the photographic memories I have. The collection will not be supplemented :-).

As we began our descent through the rubble, on went the head torches ready for complete darkness. Now we got to fight “blind” like knights of old on some valiant mission. At some stage someone announced it was her bedtime. I looked at my watch. It was now 11 pm. No wonder I was hungry. And tired. I like to be in bed by 10. I’d arisen at 5 in order to at our meeting place on time. It was already a long day. Blood sugar was not miraculously rising in the absence of dinner. On we pushed for another hour and three quarters.

I was dangerously tired on the way home, and after a momentary blackout where I started veering off the road, I bumped up my music to a volume that could possibly be heard for a radius of a kilometre, and drove at a mere 50-60 kms/hr for safety, so did not get home until about 3.15 a.m., and was not in bed before 3.45, as my poor dogs wanted food and attention, and, despite the rather odd hour to be showering, I decided it couldn’t wait until official morning.
Today, Sunday, I am weary but happy. That was a grand epic and I am delighted that I have found a group of similarly crazy people to do things like that with.

 
I nearly forgot to mention a rather scary incident that happened while we were climbing up. There were two of us a tiny bit ahead, which turns out to be fortunate, as no one was yet directly behind me. The guy had chosen a path to my left; I had chosen to ascend via an interesting chimney arrangement that offered good handholds at the top, using a crack that was 15-20 cms in from the edge. I tested it, as one always should. It felt solid, so I put all my weight (not much) into it to lever myself up. Suddenly this seemingly sturdy rock mass split away from the parent and I felt myself falling backwards down a steepish incline, closely pursued by a hunk of rock as large as a man’s torso. I find it astonishing the way that in an emergency like that, the body is able to push off nothing, and do superhuman feats. I pushed off air to lurch myself sideways so that the rock just grazed past me as it careened down the slope past me. I then lived in absolute terror for a second or two as I didn’t know where the others were – the scrub was too thick to see clearly – and I knew with certainty that that boulder would kill anyone it hit. For quite a while after that, my legs were jelly at the thought of what nearly happened. I include this here as a reminder of what one should always know and do anyway, which is to avoid being directly below someone who is climbing.
 
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Emmett 2013 Sept

 Mt Emmett   28-9 September, 2013

Above Twisted Tarns
This trip was so very beautiful, we sounded like a pack of dogs going “Wow, wow, wow” all the time. I took an unconscionable number of photos, from which fourteen appear here. Even that number seems rather large, but having only just come back today, I find it hard to eliminate any more than that. I need a bit more distance to be more selective.

The track between Scott-Kilvert Hut and the Emmett-Cradle saddle was a major cascading waterfall with deep pools in it, and the bushes overhanging it were laden with water, so that we were sopping by the time we reached said saddle and its furious wind, having managed to somehow keep our boots dry the whole morning, despite the snow and rivulets on parts of the track.

From the saddle, we began a kind of goose-step march through thick snow over / around (bit of both) the nameless hump on the map, down to the Emmett-Hump saddle and then through the thick scrub of that next saddle where we had to fight closely packed bushes as well as deep snow. The wind was so strong and the going so tough (and the clouds so thick) that I didn’t take any photos in this section.

 

Climbing Hanson’s Peak

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rocks on Emmett
In fact, this here is the first photo I took after leaving Scott-Kilvert Hut. This was, alas, our turning around point. It depicts the final few hundred metres before the summit. Maybe those boulders don’t look very big. They’re not as big as, say, those on Pelion West. However, the snow made them treacherous, and we knew that a slip in between rocks that wedged a foot, or a breakage would be disastrous. And daylight was running out. It was already way too late for any help to come, and to be out there overnight would be death. We were only 400 ms from the top, but it was time to say “goodbye” and try again another, hopefully rather less snowy, day.
We arrived back at the hut sopping wet, and cold from the icy blast that had raged on the exposed flanks of the back of Cradle. We had been planning to sleep in our tent, but changed our minds. Scott-Kilvert Hut was by this stage a kind of island in the middle of a flowing lake. A hot cup of soup and dinner were in order. We hung up our sodden gear, pretending that might help it dry, but knowing that we’d have to don it again in the morning.
My sleeping bag was warm and cosy. Every now and then I could hear the wind having a bit of a rage during the night, but mostly I slept warm and snug, despite the lack of real heat in the hut. (For European readers, and I see I have many [thanks], these huts are not like yours. They are shelters with floor to sleep on, and no electricity. You bring your own stove, food, mattress and sleeping bag, and if you want a shower, you go outside for five minutes and stand in the rain.)
 
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Maurice 2013 Sept

Mt Maurice: the Mystery of the Missing Mountain Sept 2013

View to Mt Victoria and Mt Albert

Is this the place? Nothing much matched up with the book (Abels Vol 1).
“17 kms along the road”, it said, but was that counting from the Targa (Chapel Hill Rd) or the Diddleum turn off? The book was, alas, ambiguous. (Answer: it was counting from Targa).
The mountain, too, was “ambiguous” – ‘shy’ the book dubbed it. Reclusive, elusive, downright evasive are other possible descriptors. Was there actually a mountain hiding behind those trees? We’d seen no sign of it so far whilst driving.
We hadn’t even been supposed to be on that particular road: there was a nasty “detour” sign that I determinedly ignored, knowing that if a mountain existed, it lay straight ahead. Perhaps Mt Maurice was nothing but an in-joke for the cognoscenti?

Welcomed after all
Over St Patrick’s River I drove – a good sign, as it is promised by the book – but it was still possible that I was making a parallel error. Nothing else matched, as we had been promised wet sclerophyll forest – one of my favourites with its refreshing, soothing greenness – but it hadn’t really been in evidence, and as. a special alternative, we were proffered a kind of autobahn – a dry, wide, grey, levelled-out-of-all-individuality road – with dull grey corpses of trees to match, and a boom gate forcing us to park near the river.
I thought of William Blake’s poem, Garden of Love, which depicts a somewhat similar situation, reciting it to myself as I walked:

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briers my joys and desires.

Just substitute “And trucks with their drones felled trees with loud moans” for the second last line and you have a revivified Blake over two hundred years down the track.

Ancient mama of the forest. A VERY old myrtle

So, we marched up this ugly scar feeling the force of “Thou shalt not” and the absence of beauty where it had once flourished, trying not to attend too much to the corpses of trees and the couple of remaining desiccated, dusty imitations of tree ferns that had somehow missed the shove to oblivion.

After about 40 mins, I got out my gps to have a check while we walked. This was interesting. We were on a highway that was not on the map, and the road on the map was nowhere to be seen. Hm. (See map/ route below). Better pay careful attention to contours now. They’ve completely changed the forest. Contours roughly in order at this stage, but we were about maybe 400 ms south of where a road should be. I switched map scales, but the next map said the same. Maybe the original drawers of the road had been careless and just stuck in an approximation. Nonetheless, contour-vigilance was required in case this autostrada led to nowhere that I wanted to go.


After 58 minutes (putting this in, in case it is helpful), we came to a post with two reflectors on it. No track corresponded to my gps location, but I decided the contours and general direction were good, so we’d take it. Three minutes more, and we found a sign that said: “Welcome”. We just about roared with laughter. I photographed it in case it was the only nice thing we should find this day. We still hadn’t seen any sign of our mountain. This was a real exercise in faith.

It was so much nicer once we’d left the wide, levelled road. There were now some soft, mossy sections under foot and the myrtle count increased. Birdcalls could be heard for the first time. And we had shade, blissful, soothing shade. Ahhhh. This wonderful section of forest lasted a full twenty five minutes. The trees were huge – tall, wide and stately. Ents watched our progress. Every now and then there were magnificent pink granite tors covered in moss. I delighted in them. The only problems were that we still hadn’t seen a mountain, or even a hint of a mountain, and we also hadn’t found the sort of contours that a mountain has. The map had a little gang of them, huddling together before the summit, and we were just gently easing our way along, only vaguely upwards. Somewhere we needed to encounter and cross contours if we were to climb a mountain.

All too soon our lush green primeval forest ceded to dry sclerophyll shrubbery (after 25 mins), and after another five, we encountered our first scoparia bush. Now we were on a flat, wet patch with not only scoparia but also fallen dry enmeshing bushes that resisted our progress. And there ahead, at last, were a couple of contours and a knob that I guessed was our mountain. Hoorah. Through a short but beautiful section of quite open and tall melaleucas, we hit wind and more scrub, and three minutes after that we were by the trig. I could see that much better views could be had from the other, non-summit end of this dome, so we fought scoparia and wet pools and went over. Yes, great views of all the surrounding mountains, but in particular of Mt Victoria, Albert, Saddleback, Ben Lomond, Barrow and Arthur – and we could see the sea.  We photographed, snacked, and descended. The descent took a couple of minutes longer than the ascent, which roughly translated means I was hungry.

St Patrick’s River crossing is a beautiful spot (and would make for great camping if you’ve come up from the south to bag this peak). It would have been great to have lunch there, but I hadn’t packed any, so drove back to Launceston in time for a late lunch instead.

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Saddleback 2013 Sep

Mt Saddleback   12 Sept 2013

Victoria and Albert in the distance
“How long does the book say it should take us to climb it?”, I ask as we near the parking spot for Mt Albert.
“Two hours.”
“Oh. Swear.”
We have one hour’s light left. We can’t undertake a venture of possibly four hours if the book’s right with those statistics at hand. I slam on the brakes and do a U-turn. “Can you check Saddleback? Should be page 32.”

“One hour.”

“OK. Let’s hope we cut the book time as normal.” There’re still a few more kms to drive, and the sun will set in an hour. This is ridiculous, but I’ve just driven for two hours, so I am intent on summitting something.

As we approach Saddleback, there’s a tree over the road so we have to walk from there, adding time to the ascent. Great. At least we’re underway, and I note with a little dismay that the cairns are as subtle as cairns can be, and the “track” is even subtler. We will be descending in the dark for sure unless we work miracles on a speedy ascent, and I don’t like my chances of finding these cairns in the dark. My husband has coordination problems. Is he going to be able to clamber  over these big rocks in the dark?? These are questions to be dealt with later. Right now I have summit-angst and press towards the goal with my hapless husband in pursuit.

The gradient is wonderfully steep. What a fun mountain. We go straight up on all fours – but not for long. After 22 minutes I am cresting the flatter section at the top. Good. We may make it in the light yet. Unfortunately, however, B has dropped behind on the steep part and then got lost in the confusing section on the plateau, so I have to go back and dig him out of the thorn and scrub maze in which he had got himself entangled. More precious time lost.

Arthur
Once it was flatter, however, he kept up and I slowed down, and we managed to mount some wonderful, dramatic rocks that would serve as a summit for him while I went on to the real one that still lay about 200ms further on (in length, not height).
Now it was my turn to waste precious time. I went to take a photo of where I was leaving him, which had wonderful views to the east and north, and realised that I had on my telephoto rather than my wide-angle lens. Stop, change (I had brought up three lenses). I kept taking photos … more time lost. Then, while forging on to the monstrous real summit structure, my camera jolted, just a tap, but the lens cap and polarising filter flew off and down a crevice. More time lost while I searched. I ended up spending far longer on the summit than intended, although even so, not nearly long enough for such a worthy mountain, but by now the sun was setting in earnest, and I still had to get my husband out of this rock and scrub maze.

Barrow and a small bit of Lomond
 The forecast for Cradle was minus four over night; even Launie was expecting minus one. This was not a night to be trapped on a mountain. Haste, haste. But the sunset was sooo beautiful. I collected B and we began our way down, but I just had to stop while we were still high for one last series of photos after the sun had slid behind Lomond and Barrow, leaving behind a sky of gold, and Arthur became a purple silhouette with pink background. Even if we did have to stay the night up there, I decided, it was worth it to witness that particular sunset.
Bruce looked a bit impatient as I clicked away. Had I forgotten my great urgency? Well, it was a case of “might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb”.  There was no way we were going to get down before dark – it was basically dark already – so why not at least take a few photos? He wasn’t exactly in a position to criticise me for holding him up, and soon enough we were on the treasure hunt that the trip down became – each cairn evoking a cry of victory as it was found. The dark grew darker, but I kept managing to find the next cairn. I was immersed in a world of extreme concentration as I read the bush for signs of usage. There was, however, only one spot where I was in doubt, thinking the land looked better to the left than either down or right. At that point I consulted my gps device for the first time, and a retracing of our tracks dictated that we should go slightly right instead, continuing to drop contours steadily. We obeyed my screen.
We did have head torches, but chose not to use them, as we didn’t want them destroying our night vision. They were there for a worst case scenario. On we went, until my victory cry. There was the road. High fives; smiles. Oh what a great adventure that one had been !!!! Bring on the next one.
Another two hour drive home made for a late dinner. I like at least a 1:1 ratio of driving to exercise. This trip was even worse than 2:1, but no matter. We love a grand adventure, and Saddleback provided that for us, for sure.
Bruce commented later: “I wonder what the doctor who told me to stick to flat surfaces with a handrail would say to that one.” (He has Parkinson’s disease).
“He’d never catch up with you to do the saying”, was my response.