These are the Days

A Mount Olympus Walk: Part 3

“These are the days that make the moments feel like years.”– (Ross Hamilton of Wolfstone)

[Lake Oenone from "Paris Ridge", Mt Olympus] 

Best laid plans. We would be up early, before the march flies, to tackle the steepest part of the climb before the hottest part of the day.

It is a still and clear morning. Tick. We have slept well and feel refreshed. Tick. I pull back the tent flap and there is the mountain, high, clear and beckoning above our home lake. Tick. However one member of our party feels very comfortable remaining horizontal inside the tent. Cross.

So it is not a lightning fast start to our summit day. And we do not beat the heat up the rocky, steep, tree-less and east-facing slope. C’est la vie! At least we are only carrying day packs. Our backs rejoice in that, and our steps feel light as we ease our way up slope, carefully avoiding a fagus mini-forest. It glows a vivid green, contrasting with the demure green of pencil pines. That contrast will be starker in a few months, when the fagus colours up.

The ridge we’ve started climbing looks morainal. Either side of it glacial ice would have moved during the long ice ages that shaped this whole landscape. On our side of the ridge Lake Oenone fills the resulting hollow. On the other side, still out of our view, lies its twin, Lake Helen.

In Greek myth Oenone was a beautiful nymph, secretly married to Paris, the Prince of Troy. Paris, like us, had abandoned Oenone to go to a lonely mountain top. After many intrigues he ended up in Troy where he courted the fair Helen, only to die from a poison arrow wound.

Hopeful of a better end to our story, we continue to ascend “Paris Ridge” towards our own lonely mountain top. On our right the beautiful Lake Helen soon comes into view, scintillating in the mid-morning sunlight, while on our left Lake Oenone recedes slowly. Tim takes some time to photograph the lake, given it bears the same name as his wife. In this heat, I’m more than happy to pause for a water break.

[On the bouldery ascent, Mt Olympus] 

We’ve been off track for two days now, but this ridge is the only obvious route towards the true summit of Mt Olympus. There are clear signs of footfall everywhere, and we have no difficulty reaching the rocky base of the final climb. Here large dolerite boulders lie about like playthings of the gods.

Soon we are leaping and scrambling a little, getting our arms involved as well as our legs. We are earning our altitude gain. As we stop to draw breath we debate the “right” way to the top. If there is such a way, we seem to be close to it. Just near the top of what we hope to be the final climbing gully, we find some pink tape. If we’ve gone the wrong way, we’re not the only ones.

We break out on top in clear and perfect sunshine, sweating and breathless, but elated. Of course it’s not the final top, but reaching that will be easy. We stop, drink, and look around. The views are stunning. Here on the eastern side of the escarpment we look over leeawulena/Lake St Clair to the Traveller Range, and down on Mt Ida. To the north we see Narcissus Bay and beyond that the route of the Overland Track, which winds around the bluffs and peaks of the Du Cane Range, past Cathedral Mountain, and more than 60km onwards to the just-visible Cradle Mountain.

[Summit views from Mt Olympus] 

As we wander towards the humble, lightly-cairned summit of Olympus, we start to also see the mountains to the west and south. Far and near there’s Frenchmans Cap, the West Coast ranges; the Eldon Range and Mt Rufus. Tim and I were on top of Rufus a couple of summers ago, that time with our wives. Even alone on a mountaintop, you carry others with you.

Olympus is no peaky mountain, rather a remarkably flat and quite massive plateau. As we stand scanning the rumpled horizon, it’s as though we’re on the bridge of a giant ship sailing through mountainous seas. So many of the peaks I can see and name have stories for me, three decade’s worth and more. I feel a profound joy in having had their company for so long.

This northern part of the mountain has long, shallow tiers. They are lightly clothed in low, dense vegetation of the sort that can resist heavy snow and scouring winds, as well as high heat and burning sun. One of the most successful communities seems to be the cushion plants. 

[Cushion plant: between a rock and a wet place]

Despite their name they are not soft to the touch, although they have wonderfully rounded edges. Between these mounds there are shallow pools of water. We linger beside one of particular beauty and enjoy lunch.

[Close-up of cushion plant flowering] 

Of course there are march flies in this ointment, and it is almost unbearably hot. But this is one of those mountain days you hope for and work for. These are the days that make late starts, sweaty climbs and muscle aches seem trivial. This is why we walk. 

The Abode of the Gods

A Mount Olympus Walk: Part 1

The Greeks fancied that their country occupied a central position, and that Mount Olympus, a very high mountain, the mythological abode of their gods, was placed in the exact centre.  – H. A. Guerber in “The Myths of Greece and Rome” (1907)

[Jupiter: Father of the gods, and guardian of Mt Olympus] 

When I was 11 years old, my father bought me a large, dusty and fascinating old book on mythology. Guerber’s “The Myths of Greece and Rome” cost him one pound, a princely sum for our family back then. It was to help with a school project on Greek mythology. It started a life long fascination with myths.

I suspect that each of us carries our own personal set of myths. If they’re anything like those old Greek myths, they’re a chaotic and captivating mix of beliefs, fantasies, ideas and stories that go some way towards explaining who we are, what is important to us, what we strive towards.

For many years, the south-west Tasmanian wilderness has been an important part of my mythology, with Federation Peak the mountain that best symbolises it. Yet when it comes to mountains, a part of me has always been drawn towards the centre of our island State; towards the highest of our mountains; towards those dolerite peaks that dominate the glacier-dissected country that runs from the Great Western Tiers to the Southern Ranges.

And towards Mount Olympus, our own grand, central mountain which looms large above leeawulena, the “sleeping water” of Lake St Clair. In more than thirty years of walking, tramping, rambling and otherwise exploring Tasmania’s high places, I have somehow missed out on climbing Mt Olympus.

[Tasmania's Mt Olympus above leeawulena/Lake St Clair] 

Finding a weather and work window, Tim and I decide on a three day trip. We will catch the ferry to Echo Point, walk a little way up the Overland Track, then plunge into the steep forest that will take us 500 metres higher to a campsite beside Lake Oenone. As there is no track, we have three or four different sets of “notes” about how to get there. None of them is exactly precise; nor do any of them agree. “How hard can it be?” and “What could possibly go wrong?” become our catch cries.

* * *

Tim throws his pack down next to a stream, plunges his face into the water, then scoops more and splashes it vigorously onto his face. “The gods don’t give up their abode easily,” he offers cheerfully. I loosen my pack and flop down in the shade, too stuffed to follow his example.

[Tim refreshes himself on the ascent] 

We’re nearly three hours into our ascent, and I’m thinking – or is it hoping – that by now we should be coming up over the lip of the climb and finding our lakeside campsite. Instead we plunge onward and upward into thick ti-tree, bauera and scoparia scrub. It is hot, difficult work, and progress is slow. Whatever else this is, it is not fun.

With every stop – and they are coming more frequently as the heat and our fatigue both increase – we are swarmed by march flies. The father of the gods, sitting atop Olympus, has been known to resort to this before.

Summoning his faithful Pegasus once more Bellerephon rose higher and higher, and would probably have reached Olympus’ heights, had not Jupiter sent a gadfly, which stung poor Pegasus so cruelly, that he shied viciously, and flung his too confident rider far down to the earth below. (Guerber, op. cit., p 259-260.)

So for another hour or two it’s stop, swig, swat, swear, set off again. It’s little comfort to know that only some of the 400 plus species of march fly in Australia actually bite, and then only the females. I tell Tim that they prefer the nectar of flowering plants, and that the blood, which the females acquire by using their mandibles to bite into your skin, is only used to help them produce eggs. Despite his Buddhist leanings, this doesn’t seem to comfort Tim. To restrain ourselves from squishing them, we get moving again.

In all it takes five hours to reach our goal, much longer than any of our notes had suggested. Our uncertainty has made us ultra cautious; the heat and our weariness have made decisions agonizingly slow. But when we finally walk into open sub-alpine meadows, with pencil pines and pools dotted about, and a dolerite wall ahead of us, we know we’re near. At last, just over a peaty lip, we see the twinkling waters of Lake Oenone. We don’t let our tardiness dampen our celebration. We’ve learned the hard way that the gods really don’t give up such places easily.

[Sunset on Olympus South, reflected in a tarn] 

And what a place it is; a flat site close to the lake, with fagus and pencil pines our neighbours, and columnar walls of dolerite watching over us. When the tent is up - a Macpac Olympus tent, we note - dinner follows quickly, with neither fuss nor enthusiasm. When the march flies finally leave for the night, they’re replaced by mosquitoes. For a moment we wonder what’s so wonderful about our blood. We quickly decide that what'd be truly wonderful would be to be inside the tent and in a horizontal position. Tomorrow, with or without Pegasus, we're aiming for the top of Olympus.