by mccaj » Mon 11 Mar, 2024 7:42 pm
I meant to post this earlier, but never got around to it. Better late than never! We did the Eastern Arthurs in the last week of November, 2023, in via the Huon and out Farmhouse. As mentioned in this thread, the path to Blake's Opening was clear, and made for a delightful Sunday afternoon stroll. Little did we know what lay ahead for Monday: in short, it was rough, and absolutely agree with the diabolical as quoted from others. I had read on this very post that there were hundreds of trees down, and the walk through to Cracroft crossing was only 6 to 7 hours. It took us bang on 12 hours from Blake's to Cracroft, and it was very tough going. The track was mostly easy to follow, but the number of fallen trees numbered well into the many thousands. In my head, I had imagined lots of big trees downed, but the vast majority were intermediate-sized, and had fallen from both sides of the path, with the upper branches creating interlocking, impenetrable, and unavoidable obstacles. There was a lot of crawling, and scrambling over the layers of trees that at some points we were probably 5 or 6 metres off the ground, just walking on trees; genuinely wild stuff, and likely the worst kind of walking I have ever experienced. It was also pretty mentally taxing, as the severity of blockages just ramped up throughout the walk - it occasionally eased up with a few clear sections, but the trend was from pretty ordinary -> poo..., right up to the end.
Not quite sure how you spend multiple days on the track; I have no idea where you would camp, I am not convinced that I could have pitched a tent anywhere! Still, I do not anyone that has spent any time on the track.
The rest of the hike was delightful, with the primo weather for getting up Fedders especially appreciated. As it happened, when we were just setting out for the Arthurs proper, we crossed a couple that was just coming down, and they mentioned that they were planning to exit via the Huon track; I hope they made it out okay - we didn't do a good job of communicating just how rubbish the walk was. I hope something is done to preserve the route - it provides fantastic access to the area - but given its current state, I simply cannot imagine it returning to something reasonable without serious measures of both determination, and dingoes.