Hi all,
after much deliberation over the weather I left home yesterday at 5am POSITIVE of a bluesky day in the SW, had been itching for a descent walk and this was to be the day.
I had intentions of traversing The Sentinel Range if the weather was good but entering Maydena the lack of stars in the sky caused me to go to a backup plan and hung a right onto the now all too familiar Florentine Road.
The adjusted plan was to take in a circuit walk over Lanes Peak, across to Mt Lord and back to the car via the forest. I got my car to within 900-odd metres of the Lanes Peak summit but with 600 metres vertically to gain. The walk starts in a logging coupe - lovely - after negotiating this I plunged into the forest immediately being hit by a wall of dense Baura regrowth, fortunately the forest soon opened up and despite thick bands of scrub progress was pretty good, not so good 15 mins later when I stumbled on another forestry road, doh. Now at the spot most would start the walk I re-entered the forest and found the going pretty smooth.
The forest was saturated and pretty soon I was to, with my nearly 4 year old Gore-tex jacket close to useless. The forest up to Lanes is a mixture of Sassafrass, Myrtyle, Pandani and the usual central SW scrub with plenty of rocky outcrops to make route finding interesting(in a good way).
The summit turned out to be anticlimactic as the fog in the valley extended all the way to the mountain top.......I didn't linger.
Spotting a tarn just below Mt Lord on the GPS I headed straight for it. Dropping to the plateau between the 2 peaks I could see this as being very pleasant walking and a very attractive area in the right conditions, with lots of low growing Scoparia that would put on a nice display when flowering but then I could only ever see 20-odd metres ahead, I came across several pads both animal and human but couldn't find one that lasted. The tarn was the highlight of the day, feeling 'atmospheric' to say the least. From here I could see the outline of Mt Lord and a blueish tinge above the summit, so I headed up hopeful of a good view. I have long wanted to take in the view back to K-Col and the rest of the Mt Field park as I had often gazed towards Lord from K-Col.
This was a really enjoyable climb through snow gum forest and in and around many rocky outcrops and small clifflines - good fun. The views however were not to be and SW Tas once again foiled my plans. Hanging around for half an hour all I got to see was the shape of Field West with mist pouring off it and a strange corona lighting effect, a bit like a giant bright white rainbow, really strange, but cool.
Speaking of cool I was damn near frozen and gave up on my views, deciding a return trip to Mt Lord will be on the cards in good weather, probably via Newdegate Pass and Tarn Shelf.
The descent back to the road was great fun through really attractive forest and having warmed up I took my time coming down.
With a change of clothes and a feed I headed home, not before taking a sidetrip up Tim Shea in the vain hope for some good views, not to be unfortunately, the obligatory coffee at The Possum Shed and I was home in Hobart by 3pm - of course it was great weather all day in Hobart - should have just gone up Wello
All-in-all a successful peakbagging mission but not the bluebird day I was so keen for, maybe I will try again next week.........