So 5 of us bundled into his station wagon on Sunday morning and headed up the Little Fisher River track, to Rinadeena Falls, then Long Tarns and then off track from there to Lake Gwendy where we set up camp. We'd seen three wedge tailed eagles flying over Turanna Bluff which makes it 3 walks in a row that I've seen wedgies. We ended up seeing them every day on this walk.
It was very cold, so after a nice dinner of fresh venison scotch fillet steaks, we all ended up in bed by about 7:30pm.
- This branch grew out of one tree and right into the trunk of the other, where it disappeared. Couldn't be certain which tree it originated from, at first.
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It rained on and off most of Monday night, and was still raining when I got up in the morning to put the kettle on. While waiting for it to boil, I stood on the nearly pencil pine forest behind the steep rocky hill to get shelter from the light but bitterly cold wind. Standing there in the rain, I noticed that the rain started to bounce a bit and realised it had turned to hail or sleet. "I wish it would turn to snow", I said to myself, much preferring the drier and softer form of precipitation. 2 minutes later, it turned to snow, and within half an hour, the ground was covered in snow.
I told the others most of whom were still in bed, "Hey, it's snowing really heavy out here guys!", but just got grunts in return.
So due to the heavy snow, we had to cook the bacon and egg muffins in the confines of a tent vestibule, which was challenging (two stoves, including a large wok), but worked out OK in the end.
This was the day we were to visit the unnamed lake my mate wanted to fish, so we headed off after breakfast. The snow on the ground had all melted, but it soon began to snow again. It was like that all day, snowy, sunny, snowy, sunny. You could see each snow storm approaching, and receding in the distance. Quite spectacular. Sometimes the ground was covered in snow, sometimes it was all melted again.
The walk to the lake and back took most of the day (stopping to fish occasionally), and sometimes the snow was tiny hail-like pin-point white stinging bits of ice being blasted into our faces by the wind, and sometimes it was light fluffy large flakes.
That night it was marinated venison for dinner - no fish were caught, unfortunately, although one of the guys did hook a huge one in Lake Gwendy, but didn't quite land it.
It was even colder that night, and everyone was in bed by 7:00pm, I think. And it kept snowing. All night. Very heavy.
During the night, I could occasionally feel the tent pushing against my feet or face and would have to bash it off from the inside. When I woke in the morning there was frost on the inside of my tent.
The next morning the campsite was transformed and covered in about 30cm of snow in places and it was still coming down quite heavy.
- Snow blown under the fly into the vestibule of my tent
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- Lake Gwendy Camp site early Tuesday morning, my Exped Vela I Extreme in the foreground
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- The Macpac Olympus I'd lent a couple of the other guys
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- All that could be seen of the cooking gear yesterday morning - that's the top of a Trangia kettle handle
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- The cooking gear uncovered
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- Camp site
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- Lake Gwendy from the camp site
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Well, the snow didn't let up for more than a couple of minutes here and there all day, and by the time we got back to Long Tarns, it was well over 50cm deep. But this was the best snow I've ever seen. Very dry, very soft, true powder snow. This sort of snow never lasts long in Tasmania before either melting, or becoming hard, or slushy.
We had expected the ground to be fairly clear of snow after we dropped over the edge of the plateau on the way back down, but no, it was quite deep all the way down. Rinadeena Falls in the snow looked great (I'd run out of batteries so no pictures of that until I get copies from the other guys). Indeed it had snowed right down to the car.
The walk down should have taken us about 5 hours from Gwendy, but took us 8.5 hours due to the snow. At one point, we couldn't see the opposite side of the Long Tarns when standing on the edge, because the snow was falling so hard.
When we got to the car, we found that it had about 30cm of snow on it's roof and bonnet.
Driving out proved a real challenge in the 2wd wagon. While my mate drove, 3 of us had to walk in front, clearing the road of all the trees that were bent down on the road with the weight of snow. Some were safe to drive under of over, but many were too big for that and had to be moved, or were just blocking the view too much, and he wanted to keep up speed (in fits and starts) to avoid getting bogged in the snow (and sometimes mud). He took a nice video of this while driving, which I hope to post later.
So we ended up walking an extra 2km or thereabouts on the road and it was very dark before we finally got back into the car.
The snow finally turned to sleet just as we got into Mole Creek, so it was coming down heavy to fairly low altitudes!
