Nevada Peak 2016, 2014

Nevada Peak, Second try. Feb 2016. (Attempt 1 is below).

Yesterday, I at last reached the summit of Nevada Peak, and, of course, was pleased to finish this (at the time) uncompleted business. The mountain is very beautiful, and I wish to return there with my husband, turning it into an overnight trip, and sleeping at Snowdrift Tarns. My photos, however, do not please me, as the lighting was tricky and I didn’t do a good job. At the end I have provided a jpeg image of the route in case that should help you. I would also like to offer a different opinion to the writer of the essay in the Abels book, as the writer made it sound rather arduous. I did not find it at all so, and was at the top in just over two hours, rather than the three said by the book – and that was at a very measured, happy-chatty pace.

My favourite images remain the snowy ones from my first, failed attempt, below.

Attempt 1, Aug 2014

 

Not for the first time (see two other links below) one of my best walks in terms of beauty and fun has been a walk where we failed to reach the summit. I was going to write “our goal”, but isn’t the goal actually to have a wonderful day in the wilderness rather than necessarily to reach a summit? The summit will wait for me. I’ll get there some other time, but we had a beautiful day in the bush, that’s for sure.

For me, the day began very, very early, as I had to get up at 3.30 in order to meet my friends at 6.30 at Kingston, and then drive some more with them. We all knew there had been a heavy, fresh dump of powder; we also knew that there was a possibility that we could not even reach the starting point of our walk due to deep snow or floods or a thick tree blocking our path, but we were all ready to give it a go anyway.

Tasmanian rainforest with a cover of snow is a very beautiful sight. We worked our way through the snowy fairyland, stopping to regroup, climbing steadily, but not speedily. My main impression of the day was just the joy of being there in such a fabulous environment. Towards our turnaround point, the snow was chest deep and it was becoming even slower, and extremely tiring for anyone in the lead to force a passage through. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. We were all enjoying the moment, and also all aware that we were starting to get pretty cold. It was time to head for home.

 Working the thick snow

As I enjoyed the downwards trip – made significantly easier by the fact that we just had to follow our own snow ditch – I pondered how good it is to be doing this with other like-minded people: people willing to get out of bed early and enjoy a couple of minor hardships (like being cold, carrying a pack, being fit enough to enable the project) in order to be in supreme beauty and have fun while being there: it would be much too dangerous (idiotic?) to go into an extreme environment like that solo.