Half or full day hikes near Lake Gordon or Lake Pedder?

[stoogest]

Hi all,

We're going to be spending the long weekend up at Strathgordon and I was wondering if there were any half or full day hikes to be done up there?

Is the start of the Port Davey track worthwhile?

The Eliza Plateau sounds interesting. Is there are a lot of rock hopping on this walk?

Any other suggestions are appreciated!

Cheers,
Andrew.

[pazzar]

Plenty to choose from.

Eliza is a fair trek up the hill, but on a nice day is amazing. Bit of a boulder scramble up the top.

Other half day walks, all from the roadside include Mt Wedge, The Sentinels, The Needles, Mt Sprent, Clear Hill. There are others, but these have the easiest access. Mt Wedge is the most clearly signposted of these.

It is about 3 hours walk to Junction Creek if you wanted to walk the Port Davey Track. It isn't all that inspiring unless you are like me and enjoy checking out regrowth after fires. It is generally good track for the first hour, then it is pretty muddy the rest of the way.

[stoogest]

Thanks for that, much appreciated. I'll do a bit more research to see what I can find out about each.

Would you recommend one of Mt Wedge, The Sentinels, The Needles, Mt Sprent or Clear Hill in particular?

[pazzar]

Depends how much of a challenge you want. Mt Wedge has the best track and I'm told the views are great (I got a whole lot of white!), all the others are fairly narrow, but easy enough to follow. The Needles is the shortest, could easily be done after one of the others if you were up for it. Mt Sprent is the closest to Strathgordon if you aren't wanting to travel too far, but is very steep, especially at the start.

[tigercat]

Sprent, Sentinels and Wedge are my favourites

[biggbird]

Sprent, Sentinels and Wedge are my favourites

I have done these three, plus The Needles.

Sentinel Range and Sprent were easily the pick of those four for me, but I think that's slightly weather related, as we went up Wedge yesterday and were treated to more or less the same view as Pazzar (with some extra wind and driving rain thrown in, for good measure ).

As a contrast, this was my view from the Sentinels



Got some great weather for the first half of my walk up Sprent, becoming a little cloudier as I got towards the top, but still with fantastic, moody views along the Frankland Range and across Lake Pedder



They are both definitely steep tracks, though personally I found the Sentinels to be the steeper of the two. To give you an idea of what you'll be climbing if you do the Sentinels:



One sticks hard to the right hand side of the prominent bump just to the left of centre there. It's certainly not unmanageable, but it will give your calves a workout! Sprent was definitely steeper at the very start, but I seem to recall it easing off a little more as the walk went on. The other thing worth mentioning about the Sentinels is that there is a little bit of exposure on the final climb along the summit ridge. Nothing that would bother most people, but anybody who is terrified of heights may find it a little uncomfortable. I'm also not sure I'd like to do it in high winds. This shouldn't preclude you from doing the rest of the track though, as there are still fantastic views on offer from the false summit 80% of the way up! (Which is where that shot of my view from the Sentinels came from)

As Pazzar said, The Needles really are quite short. I made it up in around 45 minutes, with a whole lot of foot dragging and "appreciating the view", so I imagine others could make it up quicker than this. I would think 35 -70 minutes would cover the ascent for most people, with an obviously shorter descent. Again, it's steep, but because it's shorter, much more manageable, and still has great views:



In the end, if you have a couple of days, I'd give them all a go, or at least a couple of them if time allows. Mt Sprent has the most "I'm in the Southwest" sort of view for me, with the buttongrass ridge along the Wilmot Range, the jagged quartzite outcrops etc giving you that real SW feeling. The Sentinels are in a great, central location, giving you fantastic view to a multitude of ranges, including those on the shores of Lake Gordon (Thumbs, Clear Hill, Denison Range et al), as well as The Franklands, Western/Eastern Arthurs etc.

One last tip, if you get the chance, go and have a gander from Red Knoll Lookout. You drive right to the top, so no walking required, but on a good day the view is fantastic, as you really are very close to some fairly remote peaks. I spent a couple of days down this way earlier in the week, and had a lot of fun up there taking photos at night:



All in all, hard to go wrong, just pick one and away you go! Hope you get some good weather, and will look forward to the photos!

[stoogest]

Thanks for those great photos biggbird, they've given me a better appreciation of what I can expect. The view at the top of Mt Sprent looks amazing!!

A lot is going to depend on the weather obviously, but I'm liking the look of Wedge, Sentinel, Needles and Sprent.

I also noticed that the Wilderness society have a list of short walks for the upper Florentine. Has anyone tried some of those?

I'm guessing it's leech country out there?? It's not a problem, but they're not my favourite Tassie critter

[stepbystep]

I also noticed that the Wilderness society have a list of short walks for the upper Florentine. Has anyone tried some of those?

If you mean 'The Tolkein Track' it's well worth visiting, this forest would have been clearfelled if it wasn't for the Styx protests.
Clear Hill is also great as it is a conglomerate peak. Something different, and the views are excellent. All the other suggestions are good ones.

[stoogest]

Unless my eyes are failing me, I didn't see any mention of a Tolkien track. This is the brochure I was looking at:

http://www.wilderness.org.au/regions/ta ... eGuide.pdf

[stepbystep]

Unless my eyes are failing me, I didn't see any mention of a Tolkien track. This is the brochure I was looking at:

http://www.wilderness.org.au/regions/ta ... eGuide.pdf

Ah sorry I was thinking of the Styx walks http://www.wilderness.org.au/regions/ta ... xGuide.pdf

[biggbird]

Pleasure Stoogest, hope it helped! Depending on your peak bagging sensibilities, there are a number of other options around as well, but some with less well defined or no tracks at all. If you are looking for an easy, relatively short off track walk, try Mt Cullen. Can't give you any more info on Clear Hill either, but will hopefully be getting up there this coming Saturday, so who knows, might see you there?

[stoogest]

Only when I've walked all the well made tracks will I take the plunge into off track walking!! So I'd say that's a while yet

[biggbird]

Well if you do, Cullen is definitely a good place to start. A quick look at a map/the mountain itself should show you a fairly obvious, easy route to the top which only requires about 50m of scrub bashing towards the very top!