Walk to Pindars Peak Jan 2010

[eggs]

Our yearly visit to Tas was finished with a 4 day walk in the Southern Ranges.
As always - I try to weigh up the weather report, and it seemed that 2 weak fronts would pass through on the first 2 days followed by 2 fine days.
So the plan was to walk to Moonlight Creek camp on the afternoon of the first day, Ooze Lake on the second day, a return trip to Pindars before heading back to Pigsty Ponds with a side trip to La Perouse, before walking out on the 4th day.

The weather was as expected for days 1 & 2 - a bit of mist and hail, but nothing too bad.
We had a promising look in the morning of day 3 and a lazy start had us watching the cloud settle on Pindars 20 mins before we got to the top!
Still we did climb it, and it sort of mocked us later in the day - being visible, but cloud wrapped on the southern side most of the time.
La Perouse in the afternoon was a different story - being well lit by sun with great views all around.

The last day was not fine at all - though not wet either. We awoke to thick mist and climbed out over Moonlight Ridge with thick mist initially, before ending up in finer conditions. Still, the cloud looked like it was chasing us down the ridge later in the day.

This walk offered some of the tougher scrub I had encountered so far - but only in small sections. There is a water bottle plucked from my pack up there somewhere, and it also managed to extract my map holder from under the pack lid at one stage.
The worst part was trying to clamber steeply downhill on the last descent, trying to negotiate some of the fallen logs over the track. It put quite a bit of strain on the old knees and ligaments at times.

A few photos to enjoy:

Looking up in forest approaching Ooze Lake

Morning view over Ooze Lake to Mt Victoria Cross

Panorama View over lakes below Pindars Peak with La Perouse and South East Cape behind

[eggs]

Panorama of Pindars Peak from Maxwells Ridge as we were going back

Panorama view north from Maxwells Ridge

Panorama of Mt La Perouse from Maxwells Ridge

[eggs]

Lonely flowers on the bleak top of La Perouse

Panorama over the larger of the Swallows Nest Lakes

Cute wombat that simply froze looking at us on the side of La Perouse

[eggs]

Pigsty Ponds on a misty morning

Another view over the misty Pigsty Ponds

Passing Bullfrog Ponds on the way out.

[eggs]

Oh and we did get the occassional views of this rather interesting mountain

[ILUVSWTAS]

Ah PB, What a gem of a Mtn!!
Awesome pics Eggs, Well done!! Really nice!

[stu]

Nice photos eggs, sorry it clagged in for you on Pindars tho.
The views from Maxwell Ridge & Pindars were a highlight for our group.
This photo was taken on the 30th Dec 2009 en route to Leaning Tea Tree saddle, to be welcomed by the barking of dogs...see other thread.
The sections between Pandanni Knob-Leaning Tea Tree saddle-PB Low camp were tough in 35+ degree heat, scratchy, thirsty uncomfortable work.
Still, a magic area I am looking forward to going back to some day (for Bisdee which we didn't attempt).

[ollster]

Hmmn, and there I was saying after the Xmas walk that I woudn't be going back to the Sthn Range anytime soon... *sigh*. Such a nice spot. Great pics!

[eggs]

Thanks for the great photo stu..

That is probably the 3rd time I have tried to run with a weather report and been disappointed. The worst was the "fine day" at Cradle were we took our young family to the top!! I have told that story elsewhere on the site.

I knew Tuesday (Day 1) would be the worst, thus our afternoon start in the shelter of the ridge. However, we met a solo walker at Ooze who had been turned back by the front that Tues morning with the full fury of the front blasting him off the climb to Pindars Peak. He had stopped there for a few days and joined us on the Pindars climb and then back over Moonlight Ridge. I had heard stories from a very regular walker of this part of Tas being the only place he had seen the water going uphill, so I was pretty happy that the worst we had was light hail on Wednesday and thick fog on Friday.
We did have extreme winds with the hail on day 2, and especially strong crossing Maxwells ridge on the way in. But I had expected it to fine up after that.
It did not rain, but during days 3 & 4 we could see the parts further north were often relatively clear while the southern coastline strip was getting wave after wave of clag.

The only thing about missing out on a clear top is that I was specifically after the view along the southern coast to PB - but the conditions were such that a photo would not have come out very well anyway. But these conditions make for different kinds of photos where the colours are greener and softer. And often with mottled light/shadow such as my shot of La Perouse. So we can always take something special away from these trips.
I was also greatly taken with the alpine fields over the hills 1 & 2, as well as the amazing slabby tops of La Perouse, Maxwells & Hill 4.

[kanangra]

Great colour in those photos. Funny how wombats will try and persuade you they are not there by freezing perfectly still. Till you approach them and they bolt down the nearest hole.

[iandsmith]

Wonderful stuff, particularly liked the Maxwells Peak panorama. Thanks for sharing.

[mjdalessa]

How goods the track (you talk about scrub on Pindars)?

[eggs]

I thought we were answering this question over on http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6788&p=86153&hilit=You+might+have+seen+my+photo+report#p86153?
Is there anything we didn't cover there? It is quite a good track - just a couple of spots were the bush has to be pushed through - but the track is still clear.

[mjdalessa]

Sorry about that, I got confused. It'd be nice if this site had an updates thing where it tells you when there are fresh comments on something you posted or posted on.

[eggs]

I believe there is such a facility for a thread - but I haven't used it.
At the bottom of each topic is a box called Subscribe Topic
I believe if you click on this it will pm whenever a new entry is put up for that topic.

[Son of a Beach]

You can use the "Subscribe" link at the bottom of topics to automatically receive an email when the topic gets a new post (you wont' get any more emails for that topic until after you visit it again, though).

Even better though, is to use the RSS/Atom feeds. Most browsers put the icon for this in the right end of the URL bar (but it's up to your browser how it makes the feeds available). You can then get automated updates regularly in whatever feed reader you use (most people use their browser, but I use my mail reader which can also handle feeds).