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Federation Peak in a Day - Old Trip Report
Wed 22 Oct, 2014 8:30 pm
I did Federation Peak as a day walk back in 2010. My post here:
http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3580&hilit=federation+peak+in+a+day
linked to my full trip report on a webpage that no longer exists. Lately a few folks have asked for a copy of the full report so here it is:
Federation Peak In a Day full trip report
In 2005 a group of us went on a five day hike into Federation Peak (from Farmhouse Creek). This was one of the more exhausting hiking trips I'd done in Tasmania with a lot of scrub bashing, knee deep mud, lots of fallen trees to clamber over/under and of course the fun walk up Moss Ridge (which is like a three dimensional maze of fallen trees). Unfortunately we didn''t get up the summit as the weather was quite miserable.
On some long day trips in New Zealand I realised that in a long day you can cover the same amount of terrain as you cover in several days if you are carrying a 20kg overnight pack. This got me thinking that it really should be possible to do Federation Peak as a day trip. With a small, light pack it would be possible to jump over logs and squeeze through tight spots, the mud would be a lot less exhausting and for a day trip the weather should be completely predictable.
The first step was to make sure that I was capable of plodding along for the time I envisioned it would take -- the last thing I wanted to do was be stuck exhausted or injured halfway to Federation Peak. A 400km Audax ride, gave me reasonable confidence in my endurance and a good idea about eating on longer trips. A 24 hour Rogaine was going to give me a bit more confidence in my long distance hiking abilities, unfortunately after about seven hours and 35km my team mate had a knee injury which ended our efforts. Having decided that I was probably up for it, it was a matter of waiting for a good day after a period of long sunny weather (which I hoped would dry out the mud). One sunny Tuesday, when I was feeling sick of my work and with a good weather forecast for Thursday, I decided to go for it.
I drove down to Farmhouse Creek after work on Wednesday. My plan was to start at midnight after a few hours sleep. I was too excited to get much sleep and headed off early at 9:20pm, just as the sun was setting. I managed a good pace to the last creek crossing. On the ascent up the ridge I lost the track and headed on up cross country (it''s very open forest, hence the track is easy to lose at night). On top of the ridge I accidentally started heading down the old track (which goes via Judd Cavern), In total I wasted about an hour looking for and following the correct track along the ridge -- it''s not terrible well marked and I was pretty keen to find it before descending from the ridge into the scrub below.
At the bottom of the descent the real fun began with lots of knee deep high suction mud. The moon provided just enough light to see the silhouettes of the surrounding mountains as I wandered over the button grass plains. The trip across the flats to Cutting Camp was uneventful, there were fewer logs across the track than I remembered (although the daypack made crossing these a breeze so may have given me an incorrect impression). There were a few sections where the track seems to fan out into quite a few parallel tracks before rejoining. In places all of the possible tracks to choose from were very overgrown; a bit of track marking with tape to try and keep one of these tracks passable into the future might be a good idea for a more relaxed trip. It felt like the bush was trying (and succeeding) to reclaim the track in quite a few places.
After much mud and scrub bashing, I reached Cutting Camp at 5:50am. It should be noted that the camp is marked at the wrong location in Chapman. This mistake resulted in us overshooting the camp on the last trip and spending an unpleasant night at the Bivvy. This time it almost tricked me again but I was quite sure that the ascent up Moss Ridge started here so filled my bottle and headed up. The ascent up Moss Ridge was a lot of fun with a daypack. It is a three dimensional maze of trees to worm your way through and made for an interesting climb upwards. I reached the Bivvy and headed out along the ridge. From here the views of Federation Peak in the early morning mist were truly incredible and elating after the long walk in. Chapman states that Federation looks so close but is yet so far away from here, to me it just looked like a lot of hard yakka to cross the rest of the ridge!
Along the ridge there are quite a few steep muddy slopes which are climbed on tree roots. I forced myself to climb these as slowly and methodically as I do when rock climbing on loose rock as some of the drop offs are high enough to be concerning. A couple of short sections were very steep and seem to have recently had big clumps of dirt and rock dislodged which made them quite challenging to get up -- miny bouldering problems that I had to think about for a moment or two. One rocky step in particular was undercut and although only about 2.5m high, without foot holds it seemed rather daunting to get up (perhaps it was just my exhaustion). It puzzled me for a moment or two, but with a bit of bridging off a nearby tree and a lunge for a root it wasn''t a problem. Finally I reached the Lower Bechervaise Plateau at 8am.
The track on the plateau consists largely of duckboard to protect the alpine vegetation. It was a strange feeling to walk on this comparative highway under the majestic summit block of Federation Peak. The highway was quickly left after descending through the gap above Lake Geeves. This was where the terrain became interesting, giving Federation the reputation as a difficult Tasmanian bushwalking peak. The descent down from the gap is easy, but you wouldn''t want to contemplate slipping; Lake Geeves sits 600m below so traversing the flank of Federation has a very exposed feeling. I spent a bit of time wandering along the high traverse and overshot the direct route to the summit. (As always I had misread the guidebook!) From where I was at the base of the next, lower, summit I had a good view of Federation Peak. There was an obvious route to the summit and tracing this down I spotted a large cairn on the Southern Traverse that I had previously bumbled past. So back I went for the final climb to the top.
The direct route was interesting with lots of really, really easy climbing on surprisingly steep rock. I was glad to have a fair bit of experience rock climbing (including very similar terrain in New Zealand) especially given that I had walked in and only slept 2 hours the previous night. With impeccable timing, the last of the morning cloud disappeared as I reached the top, providing a perfect panaromic view. I felt elated to have made it this far, but a little daunted by the prospect of having to walk back out and more immediately, climb back down to Bechervaise plateau. Surprisingly my Telstra 3G mobile worked perfectly on top and I gave my partner a quick call. After a few quick photos I decided to head back down before my legs had a chance to cramp up. The descent was quite straightforward as I''d paid a lot of attention to the route I took on the way up. Back at the lower Bechervaise plateau I celebrated having completed the ''tricky'' bit safely with a can of V and a quick lunch before heading back down Moss Ridge.
The rest of the walk out was quite uneventful. The easier navigation by daylight compensated for my tiring legs, such that I was a bit faster on the way back. I started getting a bit tired about halfway between Cutting and South Cracroft camps and having more frequent breaks. Unfortunately every time I stopped for even ten minutes, my legs became creaky and it took a few minutes of walking before everything was working again -- in particular my hip started aching a little, which was quite strange as it has never troubled me.
The golden afternoon light played through the magnificent trees on the ascent up the final ridge, a very tranquil setting. On the descent from the final ridge I realised how I''d gotten lost the night before. The bush is very open in this section and the track is marked infrequently, it requires a bit of guess work to stay on track; being able to spot the tape at a lot longer range in the daylight made things easier.
In the last hour (as always, regardless of the length of the walk) I became impatient and thus made time pass even more exasperatingly slowly. Finally I got back to the car at 10pm, 24 hours and 40 minutes after having started. I intended to drive to the closest mobile reception to let my partner know I was safe, however after about a kilometer I realised I was struggling to drive at 30km/hr so I pulled over, telling myself I''d just sleep an hour or two, sitting upright in the driver''s seat. I fell asleep instantly and woke up six hours later in exactly the same position I fell asleep in (I hadn''t even thought to recline the seat). Needless to say that day (Friday) I was pretty useless and I was a bit lazy for the rest of the weekend.
I took a little longer than the original goal of 24 hours, it would be easy to cut down on this time with fewer rest stops (many of which were more out of laziness than physical fatigue), a faster pace and less time on Bechervaise Plateau and the peak. My intention however, was not to set a speed record (I'm sure people have done this trip much faster than I ever could) but to enjoy the trip and take time to enjoy the end goal. With that in mind, my times for the sections are listed below in case they are of interest to anyone silly enough to do Federation as a day walk! Also the gps track is here:
http://www.strava.com/activities/210297826
The following is mainly for my own reference. I wore shorts and tshirt and running shoes (nice and light) and had a 18L pack which was just the right size and weighed about 4kg packed (plus water). I took:
a windbreaker
a set of thermals
a rain jacket
3/4 length rain pants
a cheap head torch
1W handheld bike torch
gps (Vista HCx)
spare batteries
celebratory can of V
a bottle of Powerade (for the Moss Ridge ascent!)
six salad rolls
six small Whittakers peanut slabs
a bag of dried banana
a 1.5L water bottle
The windbreaker, thermals and waterproof clothing went unused but would have enabled me to sleep in the bush reasonably comfortably. I would definitely, definitely, take a pair of gaitors next time....
http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3580&hilit=federation+peak+in+a+day
linked to my full trip report on a webpage that no longer exists. Lately a few folks have asked for a copy of the full report so here it is:
Federation Peak In a Day full trip report
In 2005 a group of us went on a five day hike into Federation Peak (from Farmhouse Creek). This was one of the more exhausting hiking trips I'd done in Tasmania with a lot of scrub bashing, knee deep mud, lots of fallen trees to clamber over/under and of course the fun walk up Moss Ridge (which is like a three dimensional maze of fallen trees). Unfortunately we didn''t get up the summit as the weather was quite miserable.
On some long day trips in New Zealand I realised that in a long day you can cover the same amount of terrain as you cover in several days if you are carrying a 20kg overnight pack. This got me thinking that it really should be possible to do Federation Peak as a day trip. With a small, light pack it would be possible to jump over logs and squeeze through tight spots, the mud would be a lot less exhausting and for a day trip the weather should be completely predictable.
The first step was to make sure that I was capable of plodding along for the time I envisioned it would take -- the last thing I wanted to do was be stuck exhausted or injured halfway to Federation Peak. A 400km Audax ride, gave me reasonable confidence in my endurance and a good idea about eating on longer trips. A 24 hour Rogaine was going to give me a bit more confidence in my long distance hiking abilities, unfortunately after about seven hours and 35km my team mate had a knee injury which ended our efforts. Having decided that I was probably up for it, it was a matter of waiting for a good day after a period of long sunny weather (which I hoped would dry out the mud). One sunny Tuesday, when I was feeling sick of my work and with a good weather forecast for Thursday, I decided to go for it.
I drove down to Farmhouse Creek after work on Wednesday. My plan was to start at midnight after a few hours sleep. I was too excited to get much sleep and headed off early at 9:20pm, just as the sun was setting. I managed a good pace to the last creek crossing. On the ascent up the ridge I lost the track and headed on up cross country (it''s very open forest, hence the track is easy to lose at night). On top of the ridge I accidentally started heading down the old track (which goes via Judd Cavern), In total I wasted about an hour looking for and following the correct track along the ridge -- it''s not terrible well marked and I was pretty keen to find it before descending from the ridge into the scrub below.
At the bottom of the descent the real fun began with lots of knee deep high suction mud. The moon provided just enough light to see the silhouettes of the surrounding mountains as I wandered over the button grass plains. The trip across the flats to Cutting Camp was uneventful, there were fewer logs across the track than I remembered (although the daypack made crossing these a breeze so may have given me an incorrect impression). There were a few sections where the track seems to fan out into quite a few parallel tracks before rejoining. In places all of the possible tracks to choose from were very overgrown; a bit of track marking with tape to try and keep one of these tracks passable into the future might be a good idea for a more relaxed trip. It felt like the bush was trying (and succeeding) to reclaim the track in quite a few places.
After much mud and scrub bashing, I reached Cutting Camp at 5:50am. It should be noted that the camp is marked at the wrong location in Chapman. This mistake resulted in us overshooting the camp on the last trip and spending an unpleasant night at the Bivvy. This time it almost tricked me again but I was quite sure that the ascent up Moss Ridge started here so filled my bottle and headed up. The ascent up Moss Ridge was a lot of fun with a daypack. It is a three dimensional maze of trees to worm your way through and made for an interesting climb upwards. I reached the Bivvy and headed out along the ridge. From here the views of Federation Peak in the early morning mist were truly incredible and elating after the long walk in. Chapman states that Federation looks so close but is yet so far away from here, to me it just looked like a lot of hard yakka to cross the rest of the ridge!
Along the ridge there are quite a few steep muddy slopes which are climbed on tree roots. I forced myself to climb these as slowly and methodically as I do when rock climbing on loose rock as some of the drop offs are high enough to be concerning. A couple of short sections were very steep and seem to have recently had big clumps of dirt and rock dislodged which made them quite challenging to get up -- miny bouldering problems that I had to think about for a moment or two. One rocky step in particular was undercut and although only about 2.5m high, without foot holds it seemed rather daunting to get up (perhaps it was just my exhaustion). It puzzled me for a moment or two, but with a bit of bridging off a nearby tree and a lunge for a root it wasn''t a problem. Finally I reached the Lower Bechervaise Plateau at 8am.
- Lower Bechervaise Plateau
- IMG_2267.jpg (212.58 KiB) Viewed 11311 times
The track on the plateau consists largely of duckboard to protect the alpine vegetation. It was a strange feeling to walk on this comparative highway under the majestic summit block of Federation Peak. The highway was quickly left after descending through the gap above Lake Geeves. This was where the terrain became interesting, giving Federation the reputation as a difficult Tasmanian bushwalking peak. The descent down from the gap is easy, but you wouldn''t want to contemplate slipping; Lake Geeves sits 600m below so traversing the flank of Federation has a very exposed feeling. I spent a bit of time wandering along the high traverse and overshot the direct route to the summit. (As always I had misread the guidebook!) From where I was at the base of the next, lower, summit I had a good view of Federation Peak. There was an obvious route to the summit and tracing this down I spotted a large cairn on the Southern Traverse that I had previously bumbled past. So back I went for the final climb to the top.
- The compulsory photo op halfway up Federation Peak
- IMG_2249.jpg (167.44 KiB) Viewed 11311 times
The direct route was interesting with lots of really, really easy climbing on surprisingly steep rock. I was glad to have a fair bit of experience rock climbing (including very similar terrain in New Zealand) especially given that I had walked in and only slept 2 hours the previous night. With impeccable timing, the last of the morning cloud disappeared as I reached the top, providing a perfect panaromic view. I felt elated to have made it this far, but a little daunted by the prospect of having to walk back out and more immediately, climb back down to Bechervaise plateau. Surprisingly my Telstra 3G mobile worked perfectly on top and I gave my partner a quick call. After a few quick photos I decided to head back down before my legs had a chance to cramp up. The descent was quite straightforward as I''d paid a lot of attention to the route I took on the way up. Back at the lower Bechervaise plateau I celebrated having completed the ''tricky'' bit safely with a can of V and a quick lunch before heading back down Moss Ridge.
- A panaromic view from the summit of Federation Peak
The rest of the walk out was quite uneventful. The easier navigation by daylight compensated for my tiring legs, such that I was a bit faster on the way back. I started getting a bit tired about halfway between Cutting and South Cracroft camps and having more frequent breaks. Unfortunately every time I stopped for even ten minutes, my legs became creaky and it took a few minutes of walking before everything was working again -- in particular my hip started aching a little, which was quite strange as it has never troubled me.
The golden afternoon light played through the magnificent trees on the ascent up the final ridge, a very tranquil setting. On the descent from the final ridge I realised how I''d gotten lost the night before. The bush is very open in this section and the track is marked infrequently, it requires a bit of guess work to stay on track; being able to spot the tape at a lot longer range in the daylight made things easier.
In the last hour (as always, regardless of the length of the walk) I became impatient and thus made time pass even more exasperatingly slowly. Finally I got back to the car at 10pm, 24 hours and 40 minutes after having started. I intended to drive to the closest mobile reception to let my partner know I was safe, however after about a kilometer I realised I was struggling to drive at 30km/hr so I pulled over, telling myself I''d just sleep an hour or two, sitting upright in the driver''s seat. I fell asleep instantly and woke up six hours later in exactly the same position I fell asleep in (I hadn''t even thought to recline the seat). Needless to say that day (Friday) I was pretty useless and I was a bit lazy for the rest of the weekend.
I took a little longer than the original goal of 24 hours, it would be easy to cut down on this time with fewer rest stops (many of which were more out of laziness than physical fatigue), a faster pace and less time on Bechervaise Plateau and the peak. My intention however, was not to set a speed record (I'm sure people have done this trip much faster than I ever could) but to enjoy the trip and take time to enjoy the end goal. With that in mind, my times for the sections are listed below in case they are of interest to anyone silly enough to do Federation as a day walk! Also the gps track is here:
http://www.strava.com/activities/210297826
- Segment times
The following is mainly for my own reference. I wore shorts and tshirt and running shoes (nice and light) and had a 18L pack which was just the right size and weighed about 4kg packed (plus water). I took:
a windbreaker
a set of thermals
a rain jacket
3/4 length rain pants
a cheap head torch
1W handheld bike torch
gps (Vista HCx)
spare batteries
celebratory can of V
a bottle of Powerade (for the Moss Ridge ascent!)
six salad rolls
six small Whittakers peanut slabs
a bag of dried banana
a 1.5L water bottle
The windbreaker, thermals and waterproof clothing went unused but would have enabled me to sleep in the bush reasonably comfortably. I would definitely, definitely, take a pair of gaitors next time....
Re: Federation Peak in a Day - Old Trip Report
Mon 27 Oct, 2014 10:00 am
Awesome report and a pretty mad effort. I'll be happy just to climb it at all one day, let alone in a day...
Re: Federation Peak in a Day - Old Trip Report
Mon 27 Oct, 2014 11:19 am
biggbird wrote:Awesome report and a pretty mad effort. I'll be happy just to climb it at all one day, let alone in a day...
+1
Re: Federation Peak in a Day - Old Trip Report
Mon 27 Oct, 2014 11:47 am
north-north-west wrote:biggbird wrote:Awesome report and a pretty mad effort. I'll be happy just to climb it at all one day, let alone in a day...
+1
+1 *sigh* It fell off the bucket list a few years ago, but has snuck back on. just gotta deal with insufficient fitness, injuries, acrophobia & vertigo.
Re: Federation Peak in a Day - Old Trip Report
Mon 27 Oct, 2014 3:38 pm
We could always charter a helicopter . . .
Re: Federation Peak in a Day - Old Trip Report
Mon 27 Oct, 2014 8:53 pm
Awesome trip report. It's incredible the things people get up to !!
I think if you started at 9.20pm and finished at 10pm the following evening it might be stretching the truth a bit to consider this a "day' walk.
AL
I think if you started at 9.20pm and finished at 10pm the following evening it might be stretching the truth a bit to consider this a "day' walk.
AL
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