Vegetation Cover- South West Cape

[songairen]

Hi folks

My partner and I are heading down to TAS again for the South West Cape and South Coast Track. We have 'budgeted' for 3 weeks in the park whether it be hiking, being rained out, or lazing about the cape.

I did, however, have a question about the poorly tracked/untracked sections of the SW cape circuit; I'm referencing John Chapman's most recent suggested route- The one that follows the edge of horseshoe inlet and involves the creek swims (brrR)

What is the vegetation cover like? (the 1:25000 maps can only be so useful)
* Is it mostly knee/waist/head/above height across those plains/gullies/approaching the ridges?
* Are we talking mostly buttongrass plains or heath/shrubs?
* If it's shubbery is it dense, thick, and woody? Or is it patchy and springy? (already hearing shouts of "IT'S ANOTHER SHRUBBERY")
* Are there any sections/approaches where the vegetation is particularly dense?

I have been browsing the shots people have posted of the SW cape but am aware that nobody really takes pictures of the really crappy stuff that they encounter: eg. walls of impenetrable tea tree scrub, waist high woody heath that is so dense you can almost walk on top of etc.

We are quite competent navigators by map/compass and will also be carrying a GPS. Earlier this year, however, we found ourselves forced to navigate a vegetation choked gully (described above :p). Despite knowing our exact location it still wasn't pleasant- taking us 3 hours to move 300 metres!

Any info. would be much appreciated!

[dee_legg]

Have you read this? viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3208...

[songairen]

Thanks for the link- I'll be printing Tasadam's story out to pop in the guidebook Good idea taking garbage bags to put the packs IN; I was consigned to having a wet harness......am surprised that some semblence of a track appears to exist between noyhener and horseshoe- was expecting none at all.

Looks like the only major scrub bashing was done on the cape proper and Mt. Melaleuca?

[tas-man]

Hi folks

My partner and I are heading down to TAS again for the South West Cape and South Coast Track. We have 'budgeted' for 3 weeks in the park whether it be hiking, being rained out, or lazing about the cape.

I did, however, have a question about the poorly tracked/untracked sections of the SW cape circuit; I'm referencing John Chapman's most recent suggested route- The one that follows the edge of horseshoe inlet and involves the creek swims (brrR)
<SNIP>

There are alternative route options that avoid the creek crossings, have sent PM with further info.

[tasadam]

And this - viewtopic.php?p=34495#p34495

Re the circuit, there's plenty more scrub encountered besides the cape and Mt Mel.
PM me with questions if you have any after reading my trip report.

Chapman recommends "crossing the creek where the scrub is thinnest" between Southwest Cape Range and Pasco Range.
That is funny. The scrub is not very thin there... Other places as well.
I don't want to make this walk sound easy, because it isn't. I don't want to make it sound nigh on impossible either.
Certainly to Ketchem Bay is easy enough, and getting to Wilson Bight isn't too bad.

[Macca81]

personally, i didnt find the track to the cape itself all that bad. i didnt do the circuit, just from melaluca to SW cape and back again, so i dont know what the rest of the circuit is like, but the cape track was something that we did with no real problems.

navigation was fine, never really lost the track (a moment or 2 occurred when we got to a gully and the trees were twice as tall as us with no 'track', but we got thru after finding the surveyors tape) and even when you couldnt see the ground you could 'feel' the track. chest height for a hundred or so metres of this kind of walking...

actual scrub bashing, well i havnt done any off track walking to the degree of most, but i definatly think that this was easy enuf to push thru to not be regarded as offtrack by any means. id comfortably do it again, was just a matter of 'walk and you will get thru' easy enuf for me

[songairen]

Thanks for the replies. We just got back from our trip; the SW cape presented fewer difficulties than we anticipated and only presented a couple of extra challenges over the South Coast track which we walked on the way out.

We found the SW cape easily navigable and the track quite visible for most of the circuit. Indeed, we felt the route was better delineated in the 'untracked' areas (esp. between murgab and horseshoe) mainly because it didn't dip unnecessarily into overgrown gullies or follow tall coastal heath (often we'd be pushing through vegetation on the southern parts of the circuit while only metres to the side there were clear buttongrass plains or spurs). Overall, however, we encountered only light-medium scrub at worst and never such dense vegetation that we were slowed to frustrating levels- our slowest pace at any point probably only dipped to 2kph. I had mainly been concerned about facing the sort of scrub that would slow us to 1-200 metres p/h; having encountered this before it does not make for enjoyable walking.

We carried a simple Etrex on this walk and while it was fun to use it wasn't indispensable. Crossing the SW cape range, from Wilson's Bight to Window Pane Bay, however, turned out to be a real trial. We were met with very poor weather along the ridges- horizontal rain (some sleet), thick cloud, and heavy winds. The GPS was really useful here because the cloud cover reduced our visibility to about 20m for most of the time and conditions were too poor to bother scouting for the track every time it disappeared. It took us 10 hours to walk that traverse (by comparison we did the Ironbounds in less than 5 hours) and only stopped once for a 10 minute lunch (too cold otherwise). In fact it was so cold up there we each needed to wear a thick polartec baselayer under our shells- gloves, glasses (stinging hard-driven sleet), fleece caps too. Because we expected worse weather throughout the trip, however, we were safe, dry and well equipped- I've never been so thankful to have invested in quality hardshells though. This exposed section of the route is a good reason to have the track marked as being for experienced walkers.

There were some funny moments too though; we reached horseshoe inlet at a fairly high tide (3 creek swims) and the waters covered a lot of bog areas. As a result we'd sometimes be wading along quite happily before suddenly plunging unsuspectingly into a bog up to our mid thighs with the water level higher again. At least the water washed all the mud off quickly.

I'll post some photos after I've compressed some of them