Do you think you know.....?

[Swifty]

Hi bushwalkers,

I was wondering where I should put my first post, seems here will be OK. I grew up in Tasmania and used to do a fair bit of walking when I was growing up in the '70's and early '80's. I try to get back every year at least once to visit family and do some walking, once you're hooked to walking it's so hard to give it up!

Anyway, I often wondered how extensive the alpine areas in Tasmania were, so (for whatever reason) I went through the exercise of calculating the areas over 1,000m. (No I do not work in the Bureau of Stats if that's what you're thinking!!) The seven largest areas are listed below, just giving the name of the highest point within each area. They are in alphabetic order - your task (if you wish) is to place them in order from largest to smallest.

Mt Ossa, Mt Oakleigh, Mt Massif, Mt Gell, Mt Field West, Legges Tor, Cradle Mountain.
Actually, I put them in reverse alphabetic order, silly me, never mind it is not important to the exercise.

Nice to be part of your forum.

Regards etc.

[eggs]

Hi Swifty,

A curious task you have set.
I began to think you must have missed an area which is a large slice of Tassie - but then noted that it extends via the Ducane Gap onto the ridge containing Mt Massif and the Ducane Range.
So that must be the biggest one. It would not be surprising if the area covered by this one would be as much as the other 6 combined.
I was also surprised that Mt Massif was the highest peak - but checking on the high peak list it is shown as 1514 while the Ducane Range is 1520!

The rest are a bit harder to order....

Eggs

[crazyone]

Im pretty sure that the legges tor area contains the largest amount of area over 1500mts. ok now im sure, qouting bill wilkinsons marvellous book "The Abels",
Legges Tor 275 ( theses are all quoted in hectares)
Mt Ossa 31
Stacks Bluff 19
Hamilton Crags 15
Markham heights 15
Mt Pelion West 6
Du Cane Range 6
Cradle Mtn 5
Mt Massif 5
Barn Bluff 3

its a total of 385 of which ben lomond accounts for over 85% of it.
Its a great book and i thoroughly recommend it for anyone interested in the tas mountains.
I know after the night i spent last night sleeping in wombat poo at 1500 mts thanks to a certain white out on the ben lomond plateau my interest has waned somewhat however the views from Stacks were awesome!

[Swifty]

You're on the money eggs. Apart from the Central Plateau, joined as you quite correctly noted to the Ducane Range, which comes in at 2,200 square kilometers, there is not really much of Tasmania over 1,000m. Next largest is Cradle Mtn (150 km2), Legges Tor (142 km2), Field West (83 km2) Mt Gell (82 km2) Oakleigh (62km2) Ossa (49 km2). And all the other small areas total up to about 250 square km.
Even more suprising to think that glaciation has occured at relatively low altitudes at the Tasmanian latitude - and more than once over the past 100,000 years. (When I was young, my parents were worried about that - always heard people saying "The Ice Age is Coming!")

[walkinTas]

You might like to take a look at this map. There is a flag for every Tassie Peak over 1000m. You will need to zoom in a bit to see all the flags, but can easily see where the high country is.

[vagrom]

"Port Davey, with it's inlets and islands, is an excellent example of a drowned river valley, produced by a rise in sea level which started about 18,000 years ago and ended 6,000 years ago ..." (Scenic Wonders of Australia (1976) Readers Digest).

I'm confused. We're heading into the Fourth Interglacial at the moment so it's warming up anyway; we're just giving it a decent shove (or not ...).
Tassie's a gold mine of facts-on-the-ground ancient "stuff", like those classic "U" shaped valleys (best I know is the head of Little Fisher) and Jurrasic Dolerite. ( Rexes nibbled the top of the Acropolis, but that may be an pre-urban myth.)
But i've been led to believe that 10,000 years ago the Central Plateau had a kilometer or so of ice sitting on top of it and that you could walk to Tassie. Cool!

Does anyone know, have Ice Age details been drastically revised since '76 or do the above figures/years still stack up, so to speak. Wiki talks of intermediate Ice "Periods" within the "Ages".

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[doogs]

"Port Davey, with it's inlets and islands, is an excellent example of a drowned river valley, produced by a rise in sea level which started about 18,000 years ago and ended 6,000 years ago ..." (Scenic Wonders of Australia (1976) Readers Digest).

I'm confused. We're heading into the Fourth Interglacial at the moment so it's warming up anyway; we're just giving it a decent shove (or not ...).
Tassie's a gold mine of facts-on-the-ground ancient "stuff", like those classic "U" shaped valleys (best I know is the head of Little Fisher) and Jurrasic Dolerite. ( Rexes nibbled the top of the Acropolis, but that may be an pre-urban myth.)
But i've been led to believe that 10,000 years ago the Central Plateau had a kilometer or so of ice sitting on top of it and that you could walk to Tassie. Cool!

Does anyone know, have Ice Age details been drastically revised since '76 or do the above figures/years still stack up, so to speak. Wiki talks of intermediate Ice "Periods" within the "Ages".

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It is pretty much the same I would say. The reason you could walk from the mainland to Tasmania is that there was a land bridge as so much water was locked up in icecaps, this of course meant sea level was lower with the river valleys being flooded as the sea levels rose again. The temperature fluctuates all the time in a process known as Milankovitch cycles, as the Earth orbits eliptically around the Sun and tilts on its axis the climate is controlled. With these cycles taking about 25k years they correlate very well with ice ages. So as the Earth goes through a complete cycle there are going to be times when it is colder, warmer and cold enough for ice ages as we recieve varying amount of solar radiation. Sun spot activity can also affect the Earths temperature drastically, during the middle ages they help ice fairs on the River Thames in London! These days it rarely gets cold enough to snow there. Hope that helps!!