Back in the Saddle: Part 1

A grumpy Jim moment a few years back: The wind is howling from the south-west as we walk across the Central Plateau. Occasional showers of cold, near-horizontal rain lash us. We endure it for as long as we can, then seek shelter of sorts behind a low jumble of rocks. Hunched down, we swig water, scoff scroggin, and suck air back into our lungs. The wind keeps thundering past, but a bit of sun shines on us. I take it as a signal to get moving again. But as I stand up to leave, Jim stays put, stoic and unmoving on his rocky perch. I snap a quick photo. Barely audible over the blasting wind, I hear him mumble a caption: “Jim’s last bushwalk”. 

Jim's Last Walk?

Of course it wasn’t his last walk. Jim tends to exaggerate at times. But it is fair to say that since that trip, his prerequisite list for walks has expanded. If the potential walk is long; the forecast wet; the going scrubby or off-track; the walk is in the south-west; or it doesn’t include a hut, he’s likely to be “unavailable”. Part of me can understand some of this. After all he and I are now in our 70s, and we have done this kind of rugged walking together for near enough to forty years. We already have so many great shared memories, including summiting Federation Peak, Tasmania’s hardest mountain. But another part of me isn’t ready for bushwalking to be just tales told from the armchair. And in Jim’s case, I reckon there’s life in the old dog yet. 

It’s against this background, with winter looming, that Jim gives the slightest hint that he wouldn’t mind a bit of a leg stretch. I need no further encouragement, and tell him about a new-to-us hut in the Great Western Tiers area. I enthuse further: it’s less than two hours from the track head, and (crucially) it has a wood heater. After the mildest of arm twisting, Jim is in. We carve out a few days, pack the car, and get set to drive up towards Mole Creek. 

Jim ready to start

But before we get to that, it's fair to mention a couple of other key reasons behind Jim’s pickiness about bushwalks. One is what he would call a “dicky knee”, the result of falling downstairs while carrying a load for someone. Despite physio. work, this continues to cause him grief at times, and to make walking something of a lottery. But a more serious issue was revealed after a series of medical visits; the kind that people of our age can’t (and shouldn’t) avoid. Jim has found that he has atrial fibrillation (hereafter AFib). It’s a not-uncommon heart condition in which the upper chambers of the heart (atria) beat out of sync with the lower chambers (ventricles). This results in an irregular and often more rapid heartbeat, and can lead to various complications. I’ll leave you to look it up, so you can potentially be one of those “helpful” friends who gives advice based on “Doctor Google”, rather than a decade or more of medical training. 

Understandably Jim has not been tickety-boo about all this. As a precaution he’s purchased a new watch that can warn him when he goes into AFib. Although for him the condition is largely asymptomatic, it does mean that during an episode he will have to work harder. “It’s like walking into a headwind, or swimming upstream” he tells me. All of this had been enough to flatten his normally jovial disposition. But it may also explain the above “Jim’s last bushwalk” grumpiness. He was possibly having an (undiagnosed) AFib episode during that walk. 

It's all uphill

More recently he’s received some better news. Follow-up tests and a checkup with his cardiologist have brightened the outlook somewhat. Amid the better news came one piece of advice that stood out: Just get on with life! And since one of the joys of life is to be walking into the wilds – even if Jim will find it harder – here we are, ready to walk into the wintery mountains. 

It's cool and a little cloudy, and the forecast is “mixed”; not ideal walking weather. Even so we can’t rule out the possibility of other walkers being up at the hut. So, when we arrive at the rather remote track head, and there’s one other car there, we’re apprehensive. We begin to make the mental adjustment to the prospect of sharing the hut. That shift of focus is probably a good distraction from us both becoming walking heart monitors, given the medical background to our trip. Instead, we just hoist packs and start walking towards whatever will be. 

Within 15 minutes we see two walkers coming down the track towards us. We ask them our critical questions, and are relieved. Yes, it’s their car in the carpark, and no, they’re not staying the night at the hut. Better still, they tell us, there’s no-one else there. We chat cheerily for a few minutes, then wish them well and set off uphill. Now farmland gives way to regrowth forest, and the track begins to narrow, its verges green and mossy, with contrasting pops of colourful fungi. 

Moss, ferns and fungi 

Colourful trackside fungi

We cross a pedestrian bridge where there was once a road bridge. Water trickles and tinkles beneath us, while the trees stretch and rustle high above us. This area was logged until late last century, but some big trees escaped the axe and chainsaw. The steepness of the slope might explain their luck, but it also adds to our labour. Although the walk to the hut is shortish, we’re in what you might call “winter shape”, rather than walking fit. We huff and puff up the track, but manage to keep plodding. 

Dwarfed by a giant survivor

We’re soon an hour into the walk, but I resist looking at my GPS map app to check our progress. As amazing as I find this technology, one thing it never seems to do is shorten a walk. But half an hour later, figuring we must be nearing the hut, I sneak a look at my phone map. The blue dot tells me we’re very close, less than 100m. And miraculously it’s right! Just around a bend, in a small clearing of the wet forest, we find the hut. It’s a happy moment, and not only for my hut-o-phile companion. 

The Hut At Last!

We explore the humble hut. It’s cold inside, but neat and dry, and surprisingly well-equipped, with a table and chairs, and of course the wood heater. There are sleeping platforms for 4 or 5, so we can spread out. But our most vital job is to get that fire going. Behind the door we find a bow saw and block-splitter, and outside a repurposed rain tank with a modest supply of firewood. We’ve brought some firelighters with us, but there’s also a supply inside, along with matches. We even discover a toilet with an actual toilet seat (and toilet paper). “Looxury, sheer looxury!” says Jim. 

Expert log splitter at work!

It’s not yet raining, but the forest feels dark and damp. My thermometer tells me it’s 6 degrees C, so we’re more than keen to get the fire started. While Jim gets busy splitting some logs, I saw some branches into firebox size bits. Then we scrounge some dryish kindling from the surrounding bush. An hour later, with the wood heater doing its best, the hut has only reached a modest 11 degrees. Over the couple of days we stay there, we’re surprised that we struggle to warm the hut much more than that. But there are discernible air gaps in the walls, floors and ceiling. Also, the wood heater is set back in the hearth of what was originally an open fire, so a lot of its heat is lost up the chimney. First world problems, we mutter to each other. The mere glow of the fire is enough for now. That, plus a hot brew … and a puffer jacket.

Enjoying the glow, but keeping puffers on.

A Rite of Spring

When you live on an island that straddles the Roaring Forties, you know that spring weather is going to be “interesting”.

There are complex meteorological reasons for this, but let’s simplify. When the huge land mass to our north is warming far faster than the vast oceans that totally surround us, that differential is going to mean volatile weather. At the whim of those two geographical bullies, our spring isobars tighten, as though tensing themselves for a pounding from the wind, snow, rain and sun.

[Good weather for sitting by the hut fire] 

And so it proved again for this year’s Show Day weekend. With cold fronts and cloud bands lining up for their turn, we wisely included a hut in our “boys’” Cradle Mountain bushwalking plans. It’s not that we object to a bit of whooshing weather; we know it helps make the place what it is. It’s more that we enjoy retreating to a hut after we’ve braved those elements: somewhere to warm up, dry off, sag down, have a few drinks. The perfect setting to remind ourselves how courageous and adventurous we’ve been going into the mountains in such conditions!

That was the theory at least, and it fed our email banter in the days before the trip. As we drove into Cradle Valley it was snowing and blowing, and the short walk to the hut was through six inch deep snow. But we dismissed the scene as merely “atmospheric”, especially when the wood heater was cranked up, and the first wine and cheese were liberated.

Ah but there’s always cabin fever. Reading, eating, snoozing, talking are all very well, but they need to be broken up by a little physical activity. And somehow the “12 Minute Indoor Physical Fitness” program that Tim O had thoughtfully printed out for us was never going to be a total success. No … come Saturday we were well and truly ready for some actual bushwalking.

When the weather was looking vaguely less threatening, Tim D suggested a 2 to 2 1/2 hour walk via some seldom-walked tracks and routes that he knew. With naïve trust in our friend, and a “what-could-possibly-go-wrong?” attitude, we kitted up and headed off.

[What lay ahead for us on the Cradle Plateau] 

The plan was to climb up to Cradle Plateau gradually – a kind of long sneak attack by way of Riggs Pass – before looping back towards the hut via the Horse Track. We’d be back for lunch.

Two hours later the fun really began – and we weren’t even on the plateau yet. We’d left a well-marked but unmaintained track and joined an occasionally-marked but overgrown route. As we climbed higher, tripping and slipping through ankle-tapping scrub, the weather wavered a little. Was it going to offer us some views or would the rain and snow grow worse? Frankly we expected both.

We weren’t disappointed, although it wasn’t until we reached the highest parts that the snow and wind really kicked in. Horizontal snow and sleet lashed us, biting into the exposed parts of our faces, relenting only when we found rock outcrops to shelter behind. Yet any stop quickly chilled us, regardless of the quality of our wet/cold weather gear.

[A chilly stop on the Cradle Plateau] 

We walked on, despite the Antarctic conditions, finally cresting the plateau. Visibility was poor, route markers very sparse. Tim D tried to look confident – and occasionally failed – as he searched for the cryptic route. It should be intersecting with the Horse Track, a well-marked alternative section of the highway-like Overland Track, somewhere up ahead.

Nearly four hours after starting our walk, we at last spotted the markers of the Horse Track. A couple of us whooped; Tim D looked relieved. A surprisingly high cornice of snow separated us from the track, so in a close simulation of youthful exuberance, we body-tobogganed our way down to the track.

[The Horse Track at last, with Crater Peak behind] 

An hour later we were back in our warm hut and pouring some wine. But then, as if to make us question what the fuss and fear had been about, two things happened simultaneously. The sun shone, and a wedding party turned up at our hut for a photo shoot. All dressed in the usual gear, they had made only one concession to the conditions. The bride wore floral gumboots. Ah spring!

[And the bride wore gumboots!]