Tag: Tasmania

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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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Arrowsmith and Calders Lookout 2013

Mt Arrowsmith and Calders Lookout 24 Nov, 2013

On Saturday I was getting really quite fidgety and full of anticipation. After all, it had been nearly a week since our last bushwalk. I was more than ready for the next adventure. 
This week we were going up two mountains I’d never heard of before and with a new club. Both (that is, the mountains and the people in the new club) were brilliant.
The button grass was pretty hard work; the few patches of pineapple grass, heaven; the bauera scrub a pretty welcome relief. It seemed like I was goose stepping, lifting my feet about 50 cms with every step the whole journey. Some people pay a fortune to get a full body workout in a dusty gym. We pay nothing and get the same in the beautiful outdoors, with grand vistas while we’re at it. The views of Gell, Loddons, King William !, Pitt, Milligan’s, Slatter’s, Diamond Peak, Frenchamn’s Cap and more were all wonderful. 
I didn’t want to turn around and go home after lunch, but the others said they weren’t allowed to leave me there forever, so I had to submit to group pressure and leave this enchanted spot and return to the car.
There were lots of wombats and wallabies on the road near the great lakes as we drove the final leg, and a spectacular piece of lighting as the setting sun broke through storm clouds. What a great day.
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Billopp Bluff 2013 Nov

Billopp Bluff 2013 Nov

The top part of Billopp Bluff from below
I had never heard of Billopp Bluff until I read it on the club programme. That’s one of the things I love about being in a club: it introduces us to new peaks. I assumed it would be a bit like nearby Drys Bluff – along, then up a bit, maybe a bit of real climbing, and then vast views out over the plains below to the north and east. Fine. One point. Put our names on the list.
Only in the bus did I start to hear horror reports of thick bush and nasty scree – one club member said he’d prefer to be at work, and he hates his job. Oh oh.  My mental image switched to a long unpleasant day fighting thick, prickly scrub, then dancing interminably on scree as the summit ran away from us in the distance. We had an older member with us (73) so I feared we would not get to summit at all. Oh well, here we were.

Up they come

Medium-density scrub
The leader didn’t mind my choosing the route, and the former orienteer / wild animal in me enjoys that kind of thing. I love reading the bush for the best line through it. Up the spur we went – bush not too thick, lines made going pretty easy. The older member was keeping up famously. Life was good.

The knob-cliffline saddle
The first time we hit thick scrub was just near the cliff line, when really we were nearly there, so it was pretty short lived. The route we had been advised to take was to go left via a saddle between a bump and the cliffline (see photo), and then hang a right up the gully leading to the top. Follow your nose and common sense to the summit.

On the top. Vast views as expected
Fine, but my good friend and I were smitten with curiosity when we eyed up a different gully, and we both felt like experimenting and trying our luck in it – it looked so tempting. The leader trusted us, so off we went. It was more exciting than the real route, and we enjoyed trying to lever ourselves up the steep ledges; however, in the interests of safety and group harmony we eventually backed out of it and gave chase after the others. An added bonus of our exploits was that we found the only running water on offer for the day – and it was a very hot one.

some great rocks seen on the way down

So, up the real gully and along the tiniest bit and there was the summit waiting for us (and not running away at all). There was nothing at all that I call real scree at the top. In fact, there was no ‘real scree’ to play with the whole day. There were some stones in places. I have no idea where these horror stories came from. Of course, it was not a walk in the park, and should not be attempted unless you can navigate and are very comfortable off track, as you do have to find your own way there, but given those things as prerequisites it is NOT a mountain to avoid by devising new work at the office. The 73-year old made it, which was especially good as this was his third attempt. 

Olearia argophylla
We took nearly as long on the way down as we took to ascend, which says a lot to people who know about mountains.
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Barrow 2013 Oct

Mt Barrow 29 Oct 2013

Yesterday was a perfect day – blue sky, no wind – just the sort of day that anyone who is sane and is not obliged to be working right now would decide to go up a mountain. So, my daughter, Elin and I  picked up my husband after work and told him we were going up Mt Barrow. I had packed his clothes.
Mt Barrow is a fabulous mountain if you don’t have much time. Both my daughter and I have run up it quite a bit from the bottom. Today, with toddler Gus in tow, we were just going to do the last climbing bit before the summit to give Elin another point. She’s enjoying this points game. She’s been in Tassie only a few days and has already accumulated three points to her great satisfaction. She’s plotting more mountains and more points on a return visit next month.

 We parked and did some mini-rock climbing with Gus before having a kind of summit relay that enabled a combination of babysitting and summitting for all who wanted to. Gus had a ball climbing smaller rocks and throwing stones into puddles while we all had an even better time jumping bigger rocks along the ridgeline from the top of the stairs to the trig.

We have been doing a “plank challenge” that is more than a little testing, but Elin said her legs were shaking, not from the planks, but from the precipitous drops we managed to find to increase the fun.
We were home in time for a not too late dinner. What a grand thing it is to live near mountains!!!
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Arthur 2013 Oct

Mt Arthur 27 Oct 2013

I have been sick in bed for two weeks, so just wanted to do something small today – but boy was I keen to do SOMETHING after so much hanging around in bed.
One of the many fantastic things about Tasmania is that at 2.30 pm you can make an announcement like: “Let’s go climb a mountain”, and it’s possible. Off we set to go up Arthur and take some photos. I had been up Arthur lots about 15-17 years ago, but hadn’t been up since, and had never actually been beyond the first of the many steel structures up there. I had also never seen the view, despite having done the climb on numerous occasions.
We were in a rush, and I knew Arthur well, so we packed nothing and off we set. On the way I thought it was a shame that I’d neglected to bring my instructions on how to get there. No problems. We found a sign pointing to the track on the main road, so took it, but everything seemed very different from the last time. I must be getting old. Memory fading ….
We parked in the car park, which I also did not remember, and off we set. WHAT? Up a road??? I remembered a sweet little track and a rockslide. Oh well. Must be getting very old. Memory fading …

We found the funny tin shed thing. Ah. I remembered that. At last we had a small attractive path. The views were wonderful, and it was fabulous to see them after all these years. We could see a huge stretch of coastline and expanses of countryside and other mountains. We loved it. My only regret was that the lighting was still too strong for nice photography, and I had forgotten my GND filter. Oh well.

 Once on the summit, my daughter grew anxious, as she’d left her toddler in the car with my husband who was not well. She thus decided to run back down quickly, while Elin and I took more time enjoying the view and photographing. Now, in case you just think this mistake was made by someone who is not used to bushwalking, or not clever,  I will stress without going into details that would involve bragging, that my daughter is very, very smart and she also a brilliant navigator. She was flustered that what I am about to describe happened, and was angry that there was no indication that the path was about to split, with each sub-path leading to an entirely different part of the mountain.
For, unbeknown to her (or us), and completely without signage, the path forks in an important manner, and my daughter took the wrong one, not even seeing the fork. I am detailing this here by way of a warning. The map that we had consulted had one track on it, so why should she question anything? Yes, she was hurrying to get back to her toddler, but she is not unobservant.
Meanwhile, Elin and I had finished photographing, and set off down the mountain. We came to the point of division in the track, not knowing that we had. It’s just that I went right around a rock, and Elin left. “The track’s here”, I called. “No, it’s here”, she called back.
“My track’s good and is well marked”, I insisted.
“So’s mine”, she responded.
Now, Elin is a top orienteer who hopes to make the Swedish junior team next season. I trust her judgement, but I also trust my own. I called out to maintain our tracks and see if they merged, or see what happened. We began to diverge, but were still in voice contact. Elin called out that her track had the hut on it, so I went to join her.
“My track must be the one I was remembering from yesteryear, but I have no guarantee that it goes to the new car park, so let’s take the road for speed”.
 This we did, and found a very happy baby Gus with my homemade muesli bars kind of spilling out of his grinning, satisfied mouth. However, my stomach felt very ill, when my husband asked where our daughter was, and we realised she had not returned.
Had she twisted her ankle or injured herself right up the top, or was she on the “other” track? Probably the latter. Let’s sound the horn in case that can guide her in. It didn’t.
Frantic with worry as she ran downhill, she realised she was on the wrong track, but reasoned it must be going somewhere useful, so she might as well follow it to the bottom and find someone who would let her use their phone. After much horn bipping, with the sun getting lower in the sky and with me wondering whether we should think about calling Search and Rescue, the sound of her phone ringing was music to our ears. She had found a very nice lady and called her phone which was still in the car, knowing we’d answer. Her track ended up at a place that was 11 kms away by car. Toddler Gus kept munching his muesli slabs, unconcerned at the absence of his very worried mother. But now all was well. We drove to collect her.