Finished up the rest of the photos. We headed up to the PB summit (Abel 87!) the following morning and had beautiful, clear views.
We found the logbook without any trouble, but the pen appears to have run out in October this year! We didn't have another with us, but would have brought one had we known. If anybody is heading that way, a couple of pens would be greatly appreciated by all future walkers I'm sure.
We found the descent of the cliffs fairly easy, and were well ahead of Chapman's times. The descent through the forest was a little more difficult... We were careful to stick to the taped track, which did take us to Cavern Camp eventually, but what was a good track towards the top became just a taped route towards the bottom, which made it a bit slower.
Had a fairly easy wade down the lagoon, mostly ankle deep on me. Had a brief escapade whilst crossing the two deep creeks inland, as I took a poor direction and tried to cut cross country to Prion crossing, but it was soon rectified and we made it down the lagoon in about 3.5 hours (including 30 mins of wandering around the forest time, courtesy of yours truly!).
At least it was beautiful forest to wander around in.
We then had a nice night at Prion crossing camp. We got some water from the creek a few minutes up the lagoon, just walking a little ways upstream to make sure it wasn't brackish. It wasn't the best water we had ever had, but caused us no problems. A couple we met the following day thought that they had gotten sick from the same water, for what it's worth.
I assume this to be Ile Du Golfe.
We then had the long walk out to South Cape Rivulet on Christmas day. Thankfully there has been a lot of trackwork over the South Cape Range, which meant it only took us 4.5 hours, whilst fairly tired and not pushing very hard. More fit, determined groups could do it significantly faster I should think. It was a mighty contrast to 5 or 6 years ago when we did the same section twice in two days on our first ever overnight walk together - it took us 9 hours each way back then!
We made a stop in at Osmiridium Beach, which was well worth it. Beautiful spot, and the coast was looking its wild best.
Surprise Bay was also lovely.
Spent the night at South Cape Rivulet, got up early and were back in Hobart by midday for lunch with dad before he headed north. Quick stop at Lion Rock on the way.
All in all, really quite a nice trip, with both the highs and lows adding to it as you said Tortoise. Definitely one to remember, and all the more so for the fact that I'm moving to Townsville in a couple of weeks and might not get much of a Tassie mountain fix for a while!