Little Fisher Valley to Pencil Pine Tarn

[Mafeking09]

Hi all. I'm planning a day trip up the Little Fisher Valley to Pencil Pine Tarn. ANy ideas on how long it will take return?

[Son of a Beach]

It took us about 3 hours to get to the first of the long tarns. It depends very much on your route from there. There's an easy to follow pad all the way down the western side of the first long tarn (15 minutes to half an hour - depending on how much fishing occurs along the way), and you can then skirt around the southern end of it to turn east towards Pencil Pine Tarn. It's hard to judge how long it took us to walk from the southern end of the first long tarn to Pencil Pine Tarn, as I was with a couple of guys who were fishing every bit of water in between. I would guess about half an hour.

So that's roughly 4 hours each way.

You could probably cut a bit of time of this by cutting out the Long Tarns altogether, and heading east from the northern end of the first long tarn.

You'll want to be confident with navigation, with map and compass (and GPS if you have one), as there's no real track between Long Tarns and Pencil Pine Tarn.

[Mafeking09]

Cheers NIk. That's what I was after. We were in there years ago but came from Mackenzie then out via the Walls. We'll probably head straight to Pencil Pine from top of Long tarns as you suggest - we're doing a reccy to find a camp site for a trip later in April - no fishing this trip. We are usually line of sight walkers but do take the GPS - invaluable up there when it cracks up. FAmously a few years ago we were approaching Malbena from the West and could not believe it when we hit the Lake even though the GPS said we were there! Thanks again.

[eggs]

We recently came in more or less a straight line from Lake Lexie to the top of Long Tarns.
I would recommend working a short distance south east from the top of Long Tarns onto the higher ground and then going due east across this plateau.
There was a very rough pad following this line.

At the far edge of the plateau this is the view down to Pencil Pine Tarn:

It looks very open and easy.

[Mafeking09]

Nice snap - looks great. UNfortunately IO have to have my young bloke at Lake BArrington on Saturday April 10 by 7.30am for an event so I have to exit from Pencil Pine Tarn either real early on a Saturday or late on a Friday so I'm after walk times from Pencil Pine down to Little fisher.

[eggs]

Well I marked our time from top of Lexie to Long Tarns at 1 hr 40 mins.
That is about 2.8 kms and from top of Long Tarns to Pencil Pine Tarn is about 2 kms following the route I noted above.
We were a party of 5 with youngest girl at 14 yrs old. We were not going fast, so I would expect that the leg from Long Tarns to Pencil to be about 50 mins.
That almost matches SoBs estimate.