Oh Tasmania, the way you can stand on a mountain and see nothing but more mountains and wilderness in the distance seems to just keep pulling me back time and time again.
For the fourth year in a row, I folded. I headed over to Tasmania, knowing I'd be able to get enough work to pay my way. I scheduled a month full of adventures, wholesome times with friends and work on the side. When you pack every day full, it expands to a lot of goodness into a month.
I could write a blog about every single adventure I had there, but this one is about the Tyndall Ranges. The best birthday adventure I've had in a long time.
Now, this walk has been on my list for a while and it's developed in popularity recently due to being picked as the location for the next Great Australian Walk, similar to the Three Capes. So I, along with many others, wanted to get out there before it gets too busy or regulated.
The west coast of Tassie is very well known for being wet, very wet. The landscape attracts about 3 metres of rain in a year! And so when there was a three day rain-free weather window, I had to take it. So the adventure begins…
When Dani & I arrived back to Launceston on Friday night after a 5 day running retreat in Derby, I wanted to boost as early as possible Saturday morning. It was a 3 hour drive to the trail head where we were going meet other friends driving 5 hours from Hobart at lunch time.
Some things don’t go to plan…
By lunch time we'd had a nice breakfast with new friends from the retreat, got ourselves packed and bought lunch in Launceston. It was a beautiful start to my birthday but not what we had planned.. We got to the trailhead at 4pm and the car park was full! I couldn't believe it was that busy, but then we remembered it was a long weekend in Hobart and as I said, everyone wants to do this walk before new trails are developed.
My friends from Hobart had already started walking when we arrived. Fair enough. We started what we thought was 5 kms ahead of us on a familiar terrain, knee deep mud, and straight up the mountain. No zig zags for us. Classic Tassie. Tired from our week of running we thought there was a chance it could be dark by the time we made camp, but it turns out this walk isn't as tough as we thought. It's only 2 kms of uphill, gaining about 600m, and then you reach the plateau and rewarded with a specky view of the lakes. Absolutely incredible. We quickly went from low energy to huge excitement to be in the mountains! The total distance to the first camp ended up being under 3 kms.
The options for campsites at the lake is abundant! We barely saw the other campers, and my thoughtful friends had picked out a scenic spot and set up the most beautiful birthday display & treat for me! How lucky am I!
So day one was pretty cruisy in the end; with only a couple of hours of walking. For day 2 we had options. Most people keep their tents set up and either walk to Mount Geike or Mount Sedgewick. With no plans, we looked at Mt Geike in the distance and thought it would take the morning. We thought we'd be back for lunch with time to explore the nearby Lake Huntley in the afternoon.
It was very lucky we didn't walk to Mt Sedgewick in a day because it turns out that all the other hikers took at least 12 hours, with some taking much longer. Note to self: do more research before adventures.
Mt Geike ended up being a scenic and easy-going day, but it wasn’t the morning mission that I was anticipating. We arrived back to camp at 4 pm. There are no defined paths so we found our own route skirting the edge of the plateau exploring lakes along the way. Because of the clear skies we had views spanning all over central Tasmania, towards Cradle Mountain area. Half way to Mt Geike we gained a new friend to join our group, another walking guide. After spending over an hour on the summit marveling at the view, we found our way back to camp with a mandatory dip in one of the lakes on the way.
Now this walk isn't necessarily easy but if anyone's keen to get into off track walking in Tassie this is definitely a great place to start. A nice open plateau where route finding is pretty easy and it would be pretty hard to get lost. The toughest part is the occasional drop offs where we had to find our way around or scramble up or down. As you get close to the summit there is much more of an easy to follow walking pad.
On day three, thanks to the suggestion from our beautiful new friend, we decided to hike up Mt Tyndall for sunrise. It was a 45 minute to an hour walk from the lake with our packs on. This section was difficult to navigate in the dark so make sure to have the map download.
As we were hiking up, the first light showed us that we were completely in the cloud. But we pushed on anyway, and I'm so glad we did! As we got to the top we were still in the cloud. Oh well.
We started making breakfast where I kept positive, hoping for a little bit of a cloud inversion. And boy did we get a cloud inversion! The best one I've seen! It was so incredibly magical being on top of this mountain and just seeing the peaks of iconic mountains around us! By the time we had eaten we walked to the summit cairn (the top is a big long Plateau) and were ready to head down the clouds came back and you would have never known it was such an epic sunrise except for our high stoke and incredible photos!
The walk back down was a bit challenging for weary bodies. It took about 3 hours to reach the trail head. There was time for a dip in the lake at Tullah before I departed for another adventure that afternoon.
I would 100% recommend this stunning area for someone looking for a remote and pristine camping spot to enjoy some peace or to spend time with friends, and potentially make some new ones along the way.
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