Posted on

Parangana Sugar Loaf 2017 Jun

Parangana Sugar Loaf Jun 2017


Parangana Sugar Loaf is to the right. One has to cross the water first.


Parangana ummit cairn (not quite on the highest point, but it will do).
When my friend Maureen told me she was leading a club trip to climb a mountain that you had to get to by boat (Parangana Sugar Loaf), I begged her to add my name to the list. I then had to go off and look up the name of this mountain, and to find out where on earth I was actually going. I love mountains that you have to reach by boat, so didn’t care about its location. It was handy to discover that I wouldn’t have to drive too far – and hour and a half did the trick.


I love the way that the peak baggers’ list gets us out to experience parts of our state that we didn’t even know existed: we explore new mountains, whole new areas, drive down previously unexplored roads to get there … the whole package enriches our lives. On this occasion, I got to meet some new, interesting people, too, as our common purpose brought us together to get over the water and climb this new peak.


It was only a little adventure, but we spun out the expedition for long enough to have the obligatory lunch up where the best view was. Although it is now officially winter, and despite the fact that there was a frost in the morning, you can see from the pictures it was a glorious day. The water was not tempting for swimming.


Afterwards, I used my proximity to the Arm Falls to go off and explore them (natureloverswalks.com/arm-falls). The others headed off to the North West, from whence they’d come. NWWC is a great club. Nice of them to let me gatecrash their walk.
I left my gps in the car. When my friends give me a route of our climb, I’ll publish it here.

Posted on

Parmeener 2016 Aug

Mt Parmeener is neither pretty nor dramatic. Perhaps worse for its popularity, nobody has allocated it a point, and despite its offical 1286 ms above sea level elevation (peak baggers’ master sheet incorrectly says 1280; other websites incorrectly say 1270) it fails on other criteria to be an Abel. Lots of people and things are neither pretty nor dramatic, nor worth a point in some random system, but they are still interesting for other reasons, and well worth our engagement. Mt Parmeener is one such.

The view west
Its altitude, if nothing else, should hint at its expansive views. Being right on the edge of the escarpment, it looks out north over the Mole Creek region far, far below. Looking west, we could see snow on Ossa and Pelion East. To our south, the Walls covered in snow were visible, and to the east, Quamby Bluff’s distinctive shape called to us, as well as sharp bluffs along the escarpment’s piped edge. It felt airy and wild up there. The wind was cold, but we were not blasted out of existence, and enjoyed the feeling of space along the top.

Lake Mackenzie, not too far away below there

We drove south from Mole Creek, on a road imaginatively named South Mole Creek Rd. Road names are a little confusing, as different maps call the roads a variety of names, but one thing stands firm: you want Blairs Road, and it is correctly named on all the maps I’ve consulted. We headed south from Mole Creek, as said, and after about two kilometres, turned right (west) onto a road that ran into Blairs Rd at a left hand turn that had us heading south again (named on the map). We followed Blairs Rd for several kms, through what appeared to be a farm, and on, into the forest … and up. Had there not been a big flood recently, it would have been possible to have driven to a boom gate. Now you have to stop short of that, but not too far short; fallen trees and soft ground made further driving impossible. For walkers, however, they just add a bit of fun and challenge.

The track takes you up through beautiful myrtle forest.
Beyond the boom gate (which informs you that dangerous fires are raging ahead and you should not enter), the road morphs into an old stock route – South Mole Creek Track – where cattle could have walked three abreast in some places, only single file in others. This route takes you on the gentlest of inclines up onto the escarpment. I was stunned to read we had climbed over 500ms (to the escarpment; 660 ms in total). We took around 2 hours from the car to the end of the steep climb, and a further 30 minutes from breasting the rise to our actual summit, further to the east of our emergence point on the tops. Once up onto the escarpment, the climb to the summit is minimal. Spaces were open, the air was fresh; it was great wandering along deciding which gully we’d use to attack the final rise.

My husband, with ever-worsening Parkinson’s disease, made it to the summit without any problems, so I would classify this as a very pleasant and doable family walk. At this time of year there was abundant water on top (flippers were more necessary than a water bottle). Given the many access problems posed by this winter’s floods, I recommend this track as something that remains reachable when so much else is closed off.

Mt Parmeener, route.
Posted on

Projection Bluff 2015 Jun

From the base of Projection Bluff as we passed it the first time

Luckily Projection Bluff is not far away from our intended mountain for the day, which had been Rats Castle, for we piked out of the latter. The story goes like this:
We stood at the base of Rats Castle, feet crunching the icy snow, wind howling ominously around our ears, numb, aching hands held close to our bodies in a vain attempt to warm them – and we hadn’t yet begun clutching icy vegetation. Our overpants seemed ineffective at offering any kind of help in protecting us against this blast. I gazed up to where our goal lay, up there beyond the couple-of-kilometre-long band of frosted scrub, and up above the blocks of now white dolerite. Dark clouds were swirling on the tops. It would be slow work along the ridgeline, making sure we didn’t slip on the thin ice carapace that covered each rock. Snow started falling again as we considered. This worsened matters.

The walk begins …

“If this snow continues, it may make the road undriveable on the way out,” I mused aloud. I was beginning to feel decidedly wussy about this whole venture. Luckily for me, Angela agreed to a change in plans. Let’s do nearby Projection Bluff instead – short, sweet, a pad with markers hopefully so that we didn’t have to bush bash and could move quickly enough to maybe even warm up. The path would debouch us onto the rocky area much more quickly than the alternative in front of us, and if the rocks  were treacherous, well, we’d turn around. The trouble with our planned Rats Castle was that we could work for a few hours and only then discover the rocks wouldn’t admit passage under these conditions. By choosing the shorter Projection Bluff, we’d at least get a mountain in for our drive.

So, here we were at the startling line a second time, ready to push through snowy bushes, wondering where the “pad” was, buried somewhere there under arching bushes and covered in white. We had trouble locating it at first, and decided it wasn’t there, but then some markers appeared, then disappeared in a frozen lake, but eventually reemerged in icy rainforest once we happened on the right spot out the other side. After that, it was plain sailing – just the normal game of “spot the marker” as we climbed, being careful not to be caught out on slippery ice.

 The exercise even warmed us up enough for me to shed my ridiculous oversized goretex mittens that made me shockingly clumsy and that fell off every few metres. I had enough feeling in my fingers to plait my hair at last so I could begin to see. I even had enough movement in my fingers now to tie my shoelaces properly for the first time that day.

The views from the moment we popped out above the tree line were worth any discomfort we may have felt earlier on. I was in love. Click, click. Two or three metres’ progress. Click, click. Poor Angela. She waited with great patience as my photography slowed us down far more than the icy rocks. What a privilege it was to climb something, even as small as Projection Bluff, in conditions such as these, and to witness such enormous stretches of beauty laid out before us.

 

Posted on

Elephant 2014 Jan

Mt Elephant 5 Jan 2014

Head high in cutting grass
I was in a defiant mood today. Not only had the weather forecast cheated me of yesterday’s walk (quite rightly – the wind predictions were grim), but I used the day to line up my intended walks for the summer, only to be told that every single walk I wanted was full. Another summer of doing our own thing zu zweit. Boo.

So, that mood had me announce that we would ignore the unalluring weather forecast for today with its silly bright colours indicating rain all over the state and go climb a mountain anyway – the best antidote to sulking. We hadn’t done Mt Elephant yet, and it was in the east, which had the least dramatic BoM colours for rain, so we downed a hurried breakfast and got out on the road. This time I packed gear for blizzards, just in case.

Summit cairn perched on a rock
Driving along, the weather was magnificent, and we both revelled in the play of light on the mustard-coloured grasses waving in the light breeze. The outline of the Lomond massif to our left as we progressed along the valley was clear and cheering, even if the air was not as crisp and fresh as in winter. It was a beautiful trip.

We tried to eye up our elephant as we approached, but I decided you needed as much imagination for that one as is required to see a Boa who has swallowed a pachyderm rather than a hat at the start of Antoine de St Exupery’s The Little Prince.

Victory salute

We looked for the spot described in my friend’s blog where the Pandani club had started, but were unsure as to its exact location, and we had no coordinates to help, so chose our own start, basically opposite the pancake parlour. Could come in handy at the end. A ridge came to meet the road there, so that suited me. We found a little track that got us maybe two hundred metres – away from the ridge, but what the heck – before we had to start earnestly uphill in a bush bashing spree. We both barked in two separate cough sonatas, our lungs objecting to the pollen we sent flying as we pushed through bushes that offered quite a bit of resistance. And then it got even thicker. No matter, we were on the ridge, so just had to be patient and, logically, if we kept putting one foot in front of the other, we must get there. Next came cutting grass that was over our heads high, and a forest of thick ferns.

 

A friendlier patch of smaller cutting grass
Visibility was not good, either in terms of vistas, or of the ground. I started getting a little unnerved about the fact that I never knew what I was treading on down there. I know what it is to be bitten by a tiger snake, and don’t wish to repeat the experience. This seemed like exactly the kind of country and undergrowth where i had my first encounter and I decided I was verging on tigriphobia (or serpentiphobia) today.
 
Na ja. Soon enough we were on the flat top of the mountain and I navigated us towards the dot on the map that marked the summit at the far end, still quite some way away. With visibility negligible, I was hoping I’d be accurate enough to see the tiny cairn that announced victory. 1 hr 27 mins after leaving our car, we touched it. Olay. The skies were getting decidedly darker and the wind was moaning. I was not looking forward to the return journey, so, in order to give some passing helicopter a chance to float by and offer us a lift – which we would accept – I decided we should eat, as I hate eating in the rain, and we might get hungry later, even though lunch time was still nearly two hours away.
We both felt that we made much better progress on the way down, firstly being further east than our ridge route up, and then swinging to be further west of our ascent. Admittedly, we did end up in some pretty stern dead ends of barricaded branches that brooked no arguments, but we also minimised the tall cutting grass, and we were going downhill. Our time of 1 hr 24 to get back to the car surprised us in that it barely bettered our time up. Going up, we were heading for a point feature, so I was careful about navigation; coming down we were heading for a line feature (road) so I decided to just go with whatever leads were easiest and walk along the road to the car at the end. This tactic brought us out in someone’s backyard about 300 metres west of the pass. The owner came onto his verandah to tell us we were trespassing, but was very nice in the presence of our humble apologies, so all was forgiven …. and now it was time for a pancake lunch. Hoorah.

It rained on the way home, and poured as we entered our driveway.

(Sorry the cyan line is broken. I was new to this toy and accidentally turned it off during the descent).