Bushwalk Australia

Hi all.

I'm new to Tassie and new to the forum Recently I bought a copy of the Abels Vol2 and throughout the past month have been going through the list.
The weekend gone I decided to make a visit to Adamson's peak in the south east near the town of Dover. It was fantastic weather, some of the best I have experienced yet and the walk was truly amazing. This is a great day walk but I decided to spend the night up to get a real grasp of the Southern ranges which I want to walk this summer.

To get from Dover to the trail head I rode down a gated forestry road (Adamson's peak rd) for roughly 6km, then a further 2km on the Elizabeth river rd. The walk starts in rainforest and stars to climb for some time until reaching a flat, this runs for a km or so and then the climb continues. The track is at times kind of hard to locate due to fallen trees but for the most part simply involves following ribbons.
At about the half way point I had a near miss with a seriously pissed off tiger snake, I was trying to crawl under a fallen tree when my pack got stuck. I forced myself forward and came face to face with the serpent, who made a noise and then bolted for the bush. After an hour and a half of steady climb scrub is reached and you break on to a plateau. There is an old hut that has been dilapidated with only three walls remaining. This was a cool site and a good place to chill out and have a snack. After some grub i hunted for some water and a suitable camp site, these were both easily found and in a jiff I had the tent up and running. The weekend was damn hot if you recall and it seemed about 32 degrees up there. When the sun had made it's way further across the sky and things had cooled down I made for the summit. After crossing the plateau you walk a over a small ridge and then scrub is reached, this you have to smash through until some dolerite columns are reached, from here the summit is seen in all it's glory and it's a simple boulder hop following some cairns to the summit. People have created an awesome structure cairn of some sought up there and I was very impressed. The views are astonishing and the perfect weather made it that much better. I could see the southern range in all it's glory stretching from the south (it wet my appetite like a cold one on holiday), Mt bobs and federation peak to the west, truly awesome! It was great to see Hartz to the north east which I walked up the week before. There were many peaks I didn't know but they will be walked in the future.
I stayed on the summit for a while bathing in the glory feeling jolly good about things and my choice to move down here.

It was a slow walk back down and a few wombats were viewed munching away as they do. Once back to camp, I cooked and sat up reading a novel watching the sun go down on this beautiful part of the world. The next day I made my way back down and rode down hill all the way to Dover.
This was truly a great trip, nuff said!!

Now some photos of the trip-


Adamson's from Dover

The mongrel, My mode of transport for the time being

Start of the track



Pretty specky

Dilapidated hut

My camp with peak in background

Scrub along the track, lucky I bought gators!

Looking back

Approaching the top

What a view, top notch!


Improvised celebration, I was alone so had to set it up



I recommend hitting this spot after the walk as they do a huge burger called "the Wombat" it's truly a mouth full.



Cheers for reading and hope to see you out there!
PM if anyone ever wants to go for a walk< just throwing it out there.

Sounds like a great two days and a bit of good luck with the tiger.
Nice report and pics.
How did you get 15 pics into one post?

Fenton and Gee's South-West Book, around it's centre, shows a young lady bushwalker sitting on that(?) bed, in a still intact hut. Same page has that great cairn up on La Perouse, still largely intact. Great shots. Thanks.

vagrom wrote:Same page has that great cairn up on La Perouse, still largely intact.

Scuse my ignorance, but has the cairn on La P. been reduced in size from it's original? Or has it been dismantled since 2010 (when I was last there)?

I first did La Perouse in 2002 on an club walk and the cairn was at least a third destroyed at that stage. The flat stones were spread out and around for some distance near the cairn.
One of my first enquiries on this forum concerned the concept of "cairn busting" and busters. I think I was advised at the time, the politics being hotter back then, that it was open season on a variety of features that represented wilderness trashing. I guess it came and went during that time.
I can't imagine we were looking at wind damage?
Are you saying that the cairn is now back in good nick, that is rebuilt?

vagrom wrote:Are you saying that the cairn is now back in good nick, that is rebuilt?

Dunno, I've only seen it more recently and had no idea it had been bigger. It was still massive, but now that you mention it there were a lot of scattered flat rocks.

Of course there were flat rocks a hundred metres in each direction...

La Perouse cairn November 2011

pazzar wrote:La Perouse cairn November 2011

Gee Paz, I can't see the cairn because your awesomeness is in the way.

I think it's a young Billy Graham

ollster wrote:

pazzar wrote:La Perouse cairn November 2011

Gee Paz, I can't see the cairn because your awesomeness is in the way.

It happens to the best of us from time to time

pazzar wrote:It happens to the best of us from time to time

At least you were fully clothed, unlike ILUV's similar shots.

Thanks for that!! Tell me, as that one remains on my list of mountains I want to do, I was wanting to camp up much higher than you did. Can you see any reason why one could not do that? Also, can you tell me how long the scrub lasted. And lastly, did you use your bike because the gates stopped you driving, or because you felt like cycling?? If I don't have a MTB, does that mean I have to do a longish road walk before beginning? Ta

What's the return time for this walk?

naturelover wrote:I was wanting to camp up much higher than you did. Can you see any reason why one could not do that?

It's a bit of a swamp further up the plateau. After that it's scrub, then rocks on top. Not really anywhere to camp. Depending on how adventurous you are you could go over the summit and down over the back. I'm reliably told there is some open camping out there, albeit with unreliable water.

Strider wrote:What's the return time for this walk?

For a regular bushwalker, 6.5hrs should be quite comfortable.

There is a spot to camp (if a little rough) just west of the summit with some small ponds for water...but magnificent views.
There is not really any 'scrub' to speak of, there is a track all the way to the summit...

I saw a few spots that looked good for camping higher up and to the south of were the track is, but I had already set up so could not be licked moving. From my watch it took about 6hrs of actual walking throughout and the rest chilling out. I'm young and do a fair amount of sport but have little experience walking of this sort so couldn't say how long it would take you. I'm sure most people who would visit a forum on bushwalking would be fit enough to go up and back in that time.

You can drive all the way there on a quality road, I just like riding. I would of rode back to Hobart if it wasn't for study commitments.
The other bloke answered your last question.

Hope you have a great time when you go buddy.
Cheers

stu wrote:There is a spot to camp (if a little rough) just west of the summit with some small ponds for water...but magnificent views.
There is not really any 'scrub' to speak of, there is a track all the way to the summit...

Yep this spot is magic it is effectively just below the summit known as 'The Cow' the Wstern end of the ridge. I would wager those pools are dry now though and there is only space for a cpl of tents from memory.

Such a great mountain and a side trip to The Calf is a highlight that shouldn't be missed.

Thanks, Dan. I want to get up there when the weather clears, and was intending to make it an ovenighter to make sure I have time to get out to the Calf and Mesa. Now I know just where to camp . . .

ollster wrote:

Strider wrote:What's the return time for this walk?

For a regular bushwalker, 6.5hrs should be quite comfortable.

Just for the sake of completeness and for other readers of this thread, the walk took us a few minutes over 8 hours including all stops. Aside from stopping about every 50-100m to rest the fire in my calves, 30 mins was had for lunch and another 30 mins at the summit

^We did it in about 6.5 hours with a good 40mins of breaks spread out through the walk, so I would think that 6-8 hours is probably reasonable for most people on here!

You did well biggbird, considering it is 95% steep uphill!

I'd been doing a fair bit back then, and had recently come back from walking in Nepal too, so perhaps a bit more used to it back then compared to what I am now! Uni always getting in the way of walking... Doubt I'd do so well if I tried again

biggbird wrote:I'd been doing a fair bit back then, and had recently come back from walking in Nepal too, so perhaps a bit more used to it back then compared to what I am now! Uni always getting in the way of walking... Doubt I'd do so well if I tried again

I have the same problem. Come summer I am walking every day and fit as a fiddle. But during semester I am fat and slow

Haha I know that feeling! Trying to stay fit though...

Lovely photos BTW Zepol! You got much better weather than we did, that's for sure. Drizzling off and on, windy and eventually hailing at the summit. Was actually quite speccy when we first arrived at the summit, which was just poking its head out of the clouds, with the occasional glimpses of PB, Hartz etc. That was before the hail started though...

biggbird wrote:Haha I know that feeling! Trying to stay fit though...

I've given up! Seven weeks to go and then back into it

Strider wrote:

biggbird wrote:Haha I know that feeling! Trying to stay fit though...

I've given up! Seven weeks to go and then back into it

I've not quite given up yet, but still not as fit as I once was! Hopefully Mt Field with the uni club and Ben Lomond over the weekend will help me regain some That and Neika to Sth Hobart last week!

biggbird wrote:

Strider wrote:

biggbird wrote:Haha I know that feeling! Trying to stay fit though...

I've given up! Seven weeks to go and then back into it

I've not quite given up yet, but still not as fit as I once was! Hopefully Mt Field with the uni club and Ben Lomond over the weekend will help me regain some That and Neika to Sth Hobart last week!

I did Lake Rhona the other week, which was fine until the last hour to the lake in the wind and pouring rain. Really zaps the energy out of you!

Great photos zepol, thanks for posting.

I did the Adamsons round trip yesterday. 7 hours including a good break on the top taking in the view on what was a fantastic day.

My opinion is that this is a great day trip and one that gets very little publicity. Sure, there are a few too many fallen trees on the way up through the forest and it is wet on the plateau before the climb to the summit. Notwithstanding this I am surprised that it doesn't seem to feature in anyone's lists of best daywalks in Tasmania (Chapman, Thomas...)

Highly recommended....by me anyway. For variety of terrain and views it is a winner

Well to be fair the selection Chapman and Thomas do are completely different to the one that the members of this forum would. First of all Thomas chooses to ignore walks in the Tarkine, the entire West coast, and the South West, to avoid erosion... I think that's stupid, those are amongst the best regions in Australia to walk in. And to protect them, people need to see them and learn about them.

Chapman also ignores the Tarkine and the West Coast, and focuses on "classics" regarding the day walks in the SW region (Lake Judd, Mt Anne). So, as you noticed, no one is doing day walk books with "off the beaten path" exciting walks, or variations of long overnight walks that can be squeezed in a day, for the whole island. Coastal walking is really underestimated too in all books (and on this forum too, if you have a look at the "where am I" game, you'll see it's only peaks and rocks and Alpine lakes, never beaches and cliffs), you'll never see "beach baggers" scores, and I also would like to see some wildlife oriented walks (places to observe specific types of birds, marsupials, etc...).

Such a book is cruelly missing, the problem is the only type of person that would write it would be an active walker really passionate about it, who could do something similar to what Scott Cook did on the "NZ Frenzy" series ( http://www.nzfrenzy.com/ ) although more bushwalking oriented. Old trampers like Chapman and Thomas tend to think they absolutely need to publish hard copies and can't imagine only selling e-books, not to mention their mentality : if you have a look at Day Walk Victoria by Chapman, you'll see countless of useless long walks in boring forests or showing mining relics. I'm desperately looking for books with a "I'm not *&^%$#! you" tone, a guy who would just spill his guts ("this walk is rubbish don't go there", "on a grey day forget about the views on this one", "nobody does this walk and yet it's brilliant", etc...).