Overlandish Part 2: Treading Water

After our deluge day on the Overland Track, Waterfall Valley Hut feels like a five star resort. Yes, fifteen soaked walkers and their wet gear squeezed into a small hut with one tiny gas heater would normally rate a little lower than that. It’s just that it’s surprising how cheerful a hut can become when its occupants make an effort to be sociable.

Once our saturated gear is dispensed with – some to the wet room, some to the racks around the heater – we start chatting. We begin with the usual: “Where are you from? Which way are you walking? What about this weather!?”, and soon enough we’re nattering like old friends. One group even moves up to the top bunk so our lot can all fit on the easier-to-exit bottom bunk. (I don’t stop to ask if this is a concession to our age!)

[Getting to know the neighbours: Waterfall Valley Hut (photo: Ian Grant)] 

When I brew up hot drinks, it takes both soup and coffee before I start to feel warm. It hasn’t really been cold, but when you’re soaked, 7 degrees and strong winds can chill you well enough. Card games, more chatter and some sharing of pre-dinner treats are soon warming up the social side of things too.

The south-north walkers have hair-raising tales of walking from Windermere, including knee deep water as they entered this valley. Outside it’s still raining, and it keeps raining most of the night. While that helps to drown out the sound of snoring, it does nothing for our confidence about walking tomorrow. Larry tells us he has a little radio, so he’ll check the 6am forecast.

Some of our hut mates are walking out to Cradle regardless. So the next day they’re up early, and chatting about the weather with Larry. From my warm bag I’m pretty sure I hear words like “damaging winds”, “major flood warnings”, “heavy rain”. But by the time I get to look outside, it’s just grey and showery, and the breeze seems almost gentle.

But we’ve got decisions to make, so over breakfast we ask Larry for his full weather report. Despite the look of things out the hut window, the report is dire. He sums it up for us. “Sounds like today will be worse than yesterday, and it’ll still be wet for most of the week.” Larry tops it off by showing us the barometer on his watch. Apart from elevating his gear freak status, it shows a downward trend in barometric pressure.

[Not more rain? An impromptu creek and Barn Bluff]  

After breakfast I do a circuit of the hut’s exterior. How aptly named is this valley!? There are waterfalls everywhere, near and far and in places I’ve never seen them. There’s even a creek flowing over the grass beside the hut and beneath the water tanks.

Further off I can just make out the imposing Barn Bluff. Today, at this angle, the barn is more a witch’s hat. Its cloudy shroud adds to the spell. Cascades pour from its every cliff, and I wonder what toil and trouble she is brewing. As Tasmania’s third highest peak, sitting high above “The Reserve”, this mountain is in a position to gather any weather that comes her way. The words “worse than yesterday” are the clincher for me. Certainly we won’t be walking on – or back – today. If yesterday was about literally treading water, today we’ll only do it metaphorically.

[A shrouded Barn Bluff from Waterfall Valley] 

Back in the hut we discuss our options. If we’re delayed a day, and have to do a double-length catchup day in such conditions, we’re in for a strenuous and uncomfortable week. Ian has recovered perfectly well from yesterday’s ordeal, but is very certain he doesn’t want more of the same. Larry and I tend to agree, while Mick is prevaricating. He, after all, is the only one of our group who hasn’t walked the Overland Track before.

When one of the exiting group offers to get a message to our friend Tim D. when they get to Cradle, our decision is made. We’ll stay another night here, then turn back to Cradle and hope to meet Tim. He’s planned to come up the Arm River Track to join us on the track that day anyway, so we’re hoping he won’t object to a pickup at Cradle instead.

Decision made, note to Tim written, walkers farewelled and breakfast cleaned up, we settle down for a quiet day in the hut. On queue the showers decrease, the wind fades to nothing, and Barn Bluff makes a semi-convincing cloud-free appearance. We decide we may as well explore the valley while we can, before the “worse than yesterday” decides to show up.

[Peekaboo! Barn Bluff cloud free] 

It’s showering lightly as we make our way towards the lower cliff line that holds the largest waterfalls. I’ve been coming to this valley for over 30 years, but I’ve never seen or heard it like this. Every minor declivity holds a creek, and the actual creeks are showing profound contempt for their banks. We slosh and scrub bash our way towards the nearest edge. While we can’t easily get close to the larger falls, we’re awestruck enough by the small ones.

 [A fraction of the scene: Waterfall Valley]

I ease to the edge of one torrent to take a short video (see below*), thinking in passing that if I fell into the water it would be goodnight-nurse! The normally small creek is a roaring maelstrom careening towards an 80m cliff. With so many waterfalls across a broad landscape it’s difficult to photograph the scene. But just standing there slack-jawed seems a very appropriate response.

[Ian and Mick take in Waterfall Valley] 

Our exercise for the day done, we settle back into the hut for more food and conversation. Those who have walked on have been replaced by a new lot of walkers, so there are more water-endurance tales to catch up on. We ask one who’s come in from the south what the bridge over the Forth River at Frog Flats was like. His simple reply “What bridge?” raises our eyebrows. It seems the whole track through Frog Flats had been thigh deep in water, and he hadn’t even noticed a bridge. It makes us profoundly glad that we’re only treading metaphorical water here in our five star hut.

[* if the video doesn't work on your mobile device, please try a desktop or laptop]

Rocking Cradle 1: Small Expectations

Unexpected gifts, by definition, are not expected. 

You cannot prepare yourself for them.

In the case of weather, no matter how fervently you hope for a particular outcome, or how much faith you put in forecast accuracy, weather is still driven by a chaos engine. Que sera sera!

[Could we hope for weather like this?] 

So in preparing for our recent 3 day trip to Cradle Mountain, we needed to cover all manner of gloomy possibilities. The weather station in Cradle Valley receives just shy of 3 metres of precipitation a year. That falls at least every other day, more often in winter, and average maximum temperatures for August are below 5 degrees. As we’d be staying at a higher altitude, we knew it would be windier, wetter, colder, cloudier and snowier. Over 3 days we’d undoubtedly have rain, and probably snow, sleet and hail.

In light of all this we booked a hut, and made sure we stocked it with food, beverages, books and games. Good conversation and companionable silences in a warm and dry place would help us while away our days if – or more likely when – the weather stopped play.

Add to that mix the previous week’s weather. Heavy snowfalls had blocked the road to Waldheim and Dove Lake, and covered the mountains with thick snow. A day or two out the forecast for our three days was for showery weather, with snow at higher altitudes. That would surely include our hut, which sat at nearly 1100m.

With suitably small expectations, we arrived at a cloudy, showery Waldheim early on Sunday afternoon. That morning Tim D had made himself a pair of snowshoes, and was keen to test them out in a snowdrift near the carpark. I was more than happy to join him, as I’d just procured some second-hand Yowie snowshoes that also needed trying out.

[Tim tests out his bespoke snowshoes] 

As Tim stomped about in the snow I eyed his creations – a confection of lawn mower grass-catcher bits and bread crate cast-offs tied up by wire – with a mixture of suspicion and mirth. Still they passed their (not exactly rigorous) test run, and were soon strapped onto his pack for the 1 hour wander up to the hut.

The boardwalk sections near the start were only partially snow-covered, so snowshoes weren’t warranted. But the whole landscape was cold and icy, with low clouds scudding by, occasionally dropping rain on us. We kept our waterproofs on despite the warm work of trudging up-slope.

I had tried not to talk up the hut to Lynne, but I was hopeful she’d be pleasantly surprised by its level of comfort. A Scout-owned “lodge”, it was opened in 1960, but has been greatly modified and updated over the years. As we trudged through the now deep snow, we were all pleased to see the hut. We ascended the snowy steps that lead from the track to the hut’s deck area and entrance, already impressed by its well-kept appearance.

[Approaching the hut] 

The inside smelled clean. We’d passed the previous hut occupants on the track, and they’d obviously used disinfectant liberally. From my previous visit in the 1980s, I could recall only the hut’s airy feel and pine-lined interior. It had retained those, but the layout seemed neater, better equipped, and the stainless steel lined kitchen was an eye-popper. It felt truly modern and comfortable – not something I would normally associate with mountain huts.

That in itself was something of an unexpected gift. But there was more to come, once we’d unpacked and claimed bunks. Through unspoken agreement we knew we hadn’t yet earned rest or refreshment. Besides, we had snowshoes to test out, and snow to play in. So despite ongoing showers, we put our waterproofs back on and went out to play.

[In search of a good downhill run] 

At the first good snowfield Tim and I put on our snowshoes. To be honest Lynne and Merran didn’t look at all envious, as showers had made the snow slushy. Their realism was soon confirmed when, a few minutes into their maiden voyage, Tim’s creations fell apart. It seems lawn mower grass-catcher isn’t snow-tempered, and it soon parted ways with the rest of the shoe. Tim hid his disappointment – and his defunct snowshoes – and post-holed his way up to a decent snow bank. His flesh and blood toboggan wouldn’t fail so readily.

[Lynne takes off on her waterproof-gear toboggan] 

If getting up to the snow bank took effort, sliding down didn’t. We simply sat on our bottoms, lifted our feet, and slid and yahooed our way down a good 50 metres. Then we did it again. But the effort of climbing back soon combined with a mini-blizzard to cut the sport short. Through icy bullets we mooshed and hooshed our way back down to the hut. We were convinced – in our own minds at least – that this bit of adventure had earned us some rest. Tomorrow, as we would discover, would be another adventure.

[Heading back to the hut] 

A Vigorous Change: Part 2

As much as I love a good map, it’s not the same as a landscape. Its lines, shapes and colours convey only the vaguest hint, even to the map-literate, of what you might experience when your actual feet traverse the actual land.

Nor are weather forecasts the same as the events they try to predict. You might read the words – even mark, learn and inwardly digest them – but you will have only a shape, a glimpse, a hazy impression of what that will mean when you meet the real weather in the real world.

[Campsite before the change, with the green "Storm Shelter" in the rear]

Back in Jim’s tent, the aptly named “Storm Shelter”, we had some time to ponder such matters. As the early afternoon showers settled into steady rain, we began to consider exactly what “vigorous” – the adjective the forecasters had used to describe the change we were experiencing – was going to mean to us here on the Cathedral Plateau, with nothing but a thin skin of nylon between us and the sky. We had a while to wait.

The afternoon leaked away slowly. We snoozed, chatted, listened to the thunder and the rising wind. At first the latter two were not easy to distinguish, but soon flashes of lightning, followed, one … two … three seconds later by crashing thunder, resolved any doubts. The storm was in our vicinity, if not directly over us.

[Storm brewing over Cathedral] 

The thunder was impressive. My childhood explanations: God moving the furniture; giants playing skittles; clouds bumping into each other, returned to me. The arguably more prosaic truth, that thunder is a greatly scaled-up version of the crackle made by static electricity, does little to dampen your wonder when you’re enfolded by storm. One clap became a round of applause lasting fully sixty seconds as it rolled and rebounded and ricocheted through the surrounding mountains.

Eventually, around 3pm, the show moved on. But the rain remained, keeping us inside. We had set our tent back towards some rocks and pencil pine trees, which we figured would protect us from the forecast strong westerlies. As the wind began to rise, our exposure to the south became an issue. The wet clouds racing over us were coming from the west, sure enough. But the winds were swirling and careening all over the compass.

A roaring gust now smacked into my side of the tent, bowing the short cross-pole and whacking the tent wall down on me. Startled, I looked up at the pole to see if it had bent. It seemed okay, but the winds didn’t let up. No longer a symmetrical dome, the tent had become a skewed, bellying blob with us inside it.

Another gust hit, and this time the diagonal poles were flattened across me. I held my hand up to them, hoping to stabilise the structure a little. Five, six, seven times severe gusts hit. Some were preceded by a warning runaway-locomotive sound; some came with no warning. After each episode I lay back down, hoping for the best. But even the less-than-vigorous winds were still straining the tent’s fragile structure. From where I lay the triangular vent flap looked like the ravening beak of a huge bird of prey, jabbing and probing towards me with each gust.

This kept up for an unnerving hour or more, eventually tipping me over into action. During a slight lull I got out of the tent and went in search of a more sheltered spot. The last thing we wanted to do – relocate the tent – had finally become the second last thing. Being ripped out of the tent by a gust was beginning to look a worse prospect. I told Jim what I thought. We debated the inconvenience factor: a full tent, with gear strewn everywhere, is no fun to pack up. And especially when the wind and rain are as fierce as they were. We moved anyway, into the shelter of a pencil pine grove.

[Our tent sheltered in the pencil pine grove] 

Putting your tent among trees in a gale may not seem wise. But while pencil pines can be blown over, we felt this very unlikely. Alpine conifers know how to bend, and seldom seem to break – at least in comparison with eucalypts.

The other factor in favour of moving because of wind is Murphy’s Law. Getting out of the wind is highly likely to bring about an abatement in conditions. Indeed there was enough easing of wind and rain for us to cook and eat a quick meal just after our relocation. But we were soon driven back into our tents to ponder why the forecast “occasional showers easing” had turned into several hours of continuous rain, including a prolonged and un-forecast thunderstorm. Jim eased our grumps by reading aloud some Bill Bryson. It worked a treat, and laughter became our only post-lunch exercise.

[Morning in the pine grove: photo by Jim Wilson]

When morning came, the rain had cleared and the sun was back. As we packed and left Cathedral, the superb weather felt like a benediction. Only later, once back in mobile range, did we learn how fortunate we’d actually been. Our phones were quickly full of news: wind gusts well over 150km/hour; blackouts and road closures; at least one tent destroyed (on another mountain); and worst of all a fatality due to a tree fall.

[Sunshine in rainforest near the walk's end] 

There’s nothing like perspective to turn your grumps to gratefulness.

A Vigorous Change: Part 1

Vigorous is not a word you hear a lot these days, even of people. Strange then to hear it used in a weather forecast.

[Towards the Overland Track from Cathedral, with weather coming] 

Out of curiosity I looked it up. “Vigorous: characterized by or involving physical strength, effort, or energy.” (Oxford Dictionaries) Aha – related to bushwalking, I thought. They added some synonyms: “strenuous, powerful, potent, forceful, forcible, spirited, mettlesome, determined, resolute, aggressive, eager, keen, active, enthusiastic, zealous, ardent, fervent, vehement, intense, intensive, passionate, fiery, wild, unrestrained, uncontrolled, unbridled; tough, blunt, hard-hitting, pulling no punches.” Not MY kind of bushwalking then, I quickly concluded.

Still the words “vigorous westerly change” were part of Sunday's forecast. I suppose I should have got the picture that the middle day of our walk could be challenging. But there were no formal warnings for bushwalkers, graziers, motorists, or any of the other usual out-of-doors suspects. And the change was only expected to bring infrequent showers to the highland area that was our destination. Just in case we took the precaution of planning to camp somewhere that was protected from the west.

We began our walk remarkably early (for us) on the Saturday morning. Weather came into that decision too. It was expected to be sunny and hot, and we had 500m of altitude to gain: not a welcome prospect in hot weather with a full pack.

[Respite from the heat: forest on the way to Cathedral Plateau] 

In the end it made little difference. The exertion of the climb created its own heat, particularly the steep pinch from Chapter Lake up beside an almost waterless Grail Falls. By the time we reached Chalice Lake, the first camping spot on the Cathedral Plateau, the three of us were as parched and exhausted-looking as the plateau’s plants. We would happily have put up our tents at Chalice, a place we’d stayed a few times. But we were meeting two friends at another lake, and were bound to push on into the hottest part of the day, with little or no tree shade.

[Drought-parched vegetation, Cathedral Plateau] 

“Tent Tarn is only 30 minutes on from Chalice” a bushwalker friend had told me. In our fatigued state, that became 50 long minutes. “A cold beer, a Sauv. Blanc, or a cheering cup of tea” was Jim’s request on meeting our already-ensconced friends. “In order of preference”, he added, optimistically.

10 minutes later (yes, they had a Jetboil), we were all sipping tea and swatting march flies like old hands. After a half-hearted search for tent sites, we settled on a flattish spot, and turned to the more important business of catching up with Tim and Merran, our Sheffield-based friends, over food and wine.

[Jim shares out the wine meticulously] 

Somehow pooling our appetisers and drinks worked to perfection, and under blue skies and high, wispy clouds we began setting the world to rights. We eventually caught our friends up on the vigorous forecast, but still made tentative plans to head up Cathedral in the morning, unless the weather shouted otherwise.  

It didn’t. Despite a rising breeze and an overcast sky, we all agreed it was a good day for being on a mountaintop. And on the Cathedral Plateau you're spoiled for choice. The place namers have had an ecclesiastical field day here, with cathedral, spire, dean, bishop, chapter, chalice, grail, cloister and more church-related titles gracing the plateau and surrounds.

We decided on the high point of Cathedral Mt itself first. Taking in magnificent views over large sections of the Overland Track – and well beyond – Cathedral is a grandstand for the highest parts of our mountain-rich island.

[Walking party and pool, with distant Du Cane Range ... and my boots] 

There is a kind of triangulation of memories when you’ve walked in these mountains for half your life. On Cathedral you’re looking back on several places from which you’ve viewed Cathedral. I have vivid memories of camping near Wadley’s Hut in the Mersey Valley, looking up at Cathedral as it was monstered first by black clouds, then by lightning and thunder. And there have been numerous times on the Overland Track, whether from Kia Ora or Du Cane hut, when I’ve looked across at the hugely impressive cliffs and massive rockfall that mark the western side of Cathedral.

This day, for a little variety, we wandered across to one of the Twin Spires via a couple of delightful pools. Twin Spires are a little to the north of Cathedral proper, and actually a little higher. While the view from them was no worse, the wind was starting to get up, and the clouds were starting to thicken between distant sunny patches.

[Clouds thicken over Mt Ossa, from Twin Spires] 

We had lunch sheltering behind some rocks, and exited the mountain just as thunder started rumbling. While dry to start with, it was soon spitting, then raining. We quickly got back to our camp and headed into our tents, happy to have summitted, happy to have earned some horizontal time in a dry tent, while it rained in a proper though certainly not vigorous manner.

Nor Isobars a Cage

South West Cape Walk, Part 1

The track between Melaleuca and New Harbour 

It doesn’t pay to indebt yourself to the weather gods. After an unseasonally warm spring walk described here I had high hopes for our long-planned summer walk in the far south-west.

Yes, east is east, and south-west is south-west, and never the twain shall meet, in weather terms at least. But I was smiling as Christmas merged into New Year, and warm, dry weather patterns continued. With our group of five confirmed, we booked the light plane from Cambridge to Melaleuca for Monday the 9^th. And almost immediately the long-term forecast started to go pear-shaped.

I’m a keen watcher of weather maps, having studied climatology for two years. It has made me wary of long-term forecasts, but as the day approached the forecasters unfortunately looked like being vindicated. Formerly bold high pressure systems suddenly became shy, shrinking like children at their mother’s skirt – in this case mainland Australia.

Isobars tightened as a series of cold fronts began to push up over Tasmania from the cold Southern Ocean. Four fronts in two days, gale warnings, forecasts of snow, swells to 7 metres off the south-west, winds over 100km/hour at Maatsuyker Island. These are NOT ideal precursors to a walk in the south-west!

Rain on the Plain, Melaleuca, Tasmania 

^{On Monday the 9th, after an almost sleepless night listening to wind howling through the trees, I was not surprised to get an early morning phone call from the airline saying our flights would be delayed till at least the afternoon by “unseasonally strong winds”. It was disappointing, but certainly not surprising.}

What to do in the face of such news? My response was to go forecast shopping, as if to will the weather to recover from its ill disposition. I huddled over various different internet weather maps, checked ground observations, watched trends, assessed wind and precipitation projections. And of course I debated the future of the whole trip with other members of the party, some of them not all that keen to continue.

17^th century English poet Richard Lovelace, once imprisoned for his political views, wrote the well known lines:

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.

I tried to convince the group that a little wind and some showers need not stop us getting out there, changing Lovelace’s words to “nor isobars a cage.”

We agreed to set Tuesday afternoon as our flight deadline. Each of us had other commitments, and only a finite number of days off work. While we waited we cast around for other walks, all of them "softer", and all of them still prone to the very same weather pattern that seemed determined to engulf the state.

Around Tuesday lunchtime the call from the airline came, almost at the last possible minute.  We would be taking off at 1:30pm. We conferred, and agreed that this should give us enough time to arrive at Melaleuca, get organised, and walk to the New Harbour campsite before dark.

Rain on the Plane, Melaleuca Airstrip 

A few of the group popped airsick pills with our hurried lunch, and just before 2pm we lifted off into the showery and blustery beyond. Taking the coastal route via Cockle Creek and the south coast, we turned inland at Cox Bight and landed at Melaleuca during a light shower. Yes, the forecast was for further showers, and possibly storms with hail, but I still found that prospect better than the terrible cabin fever that had gripped me for 30 hours or more. As traveller Paul Theroux puts it, being kept waiting is the human conditon. So how good it was to be waiting no longer, and to be out in this wild and beautiful place!

Some of the planks on Tasmania's South Coast Track 

By 3pm we were walking the South Coast Track, the first few kilometres of which took us towards our own wilder, less-travelled track. By 3:10pm Jim, one of our most experienced walkers, had slipped and landed on his face and ribs on one of the first sections of planking. Bleeding and shaken, but still in one piece, he convinced us he was okay to continue. His ribs even coped with the mirth caused by our warnings against further “planking”. Still, it was not the happiest start to what was already a fraught trip.

Slow Dance Into Spring

Swaying or dancing? Tenuiramis woodland in South Hobart

Have we been abandoned by the roaring forties? That fastidious sweeper of Tasmania’s weather threshold; that dependable bringer of showers and sunshine in equal measure, seems to have left us in the lumbering grip of moody, blunt-fingered low pressure troughs. Careless heavy rains, doldrum drear winds, and a long run of dreich* weather have been the result.

Whatever the weather, getting out is still essential, even if walking our dog in the bush has become a gum-boot affair. This morning everything is still wet. The background shush of the rivulet joins with the tickle of water in a newly eroded gully. As we climb the hill behind our house, the usually hard, dry soil,  where it’s not just plain muddy, has an unaccustomed give to it.

There is a feel of change in the air: sunshine for a start, and sunshine with warmth in it. But there are other sights and sounds of change too. The pee-paw of spotted pardalotes and the chip and chatter of other birds also signal the shift.

We find the season’s first orchids, greenhoods and spider orchids, thriving on the wet winter conditions. Wildflowers too are blossoming, from the whites and reds of epachrids to the creams and yellows of acacias and the deep gold of pultenaeas.

Signs of spring in our local bush

In places, however, water has turned from giver to destroyer. The sheer volume of winter rain – in concert with inept road drainage upstream – has stripped out great gobbets of topsoil and created open-cuts in the slopes. We climb steeply towards the head of the gully, where a huge dead tree straddles what is becoming a gorge. This survivor of the 1967 bushfires must soon be undermined and fall.

Lower down this new gully a crater has appeared. A garage-sized block of earth has collapsed due to undermining. Fully-grown stringybark trees have dropped into the hole intact. For the moment they live on, shaken and skewed, but alive. Still, given the instability of the soil, their struggle might just be beginning.

This freshly-collapsed block of earth, complete with trees, has been undermined by water.

We wander over to one of our favourite “character” trees, a Eucalyptus tenuiramis we’ve nick-named Lena on account of her near-horizontal angle of growth. Alas Lena too has been hit hard by the wildly wet winter. Already undermined by insect attack, her trunk has fractured near ground level. Instead of hovering above the earth, Lena has fallen fully to ground.

We inspect the tree, and find there are still some connections between the trunk and the rootstock. Her leaves are green and healthy looking too. She may, perhaps, live on in this state for some time. We will keep a regular eye on Lena, although we wonder whether we should rename her Reclina.

"Lena" the gum tree before (left) and after (right) the fall 

Elsewhere there are happier stories among the tenuiramis clan. The habitually dry, shallow soils have taken water deep. The tenuiramis woodlands seem to glow with health. I fancy they are swaying, dancing even: a long, slow dance to the wildly intricate rhythms of the seasons. If they know anything, they know to dance while they may. And what better reason than the stuttering, slow, but inevitable arrival of spring in Tasmania.

* a Scots word for grey and dismal.

Back to Cradle

[Savouring the summit of Cradle Mountain, Tasmania]

Recently I returned to the summit of Cradle Mountain. It was partly in the spirit of getting back on my horse, although the proverbial dog returning to his vomit could be another way of looking at it.

Last October I fell off the mountain. Or at least I slipped and fell off a part of the mountain, somersaulting backwards down a snowy chute for a few frightening seconds. You can read about it here http://auntyscuttle.blogspot.com/2009/10/cradled.html

But March is a very different time of the year to October. I often tell visitors that autumn is Tasmania’s most reliable season. So the plan to spend the March long weekend at Cradle Mountain with my wife Lynne and some of my mainland family looked good on paper. That was until a rogue low pressure trough began slouching across Bass Strait towards us. It looked as though card games, eating and reading might be our only forms of exercise.

But you’ve gotta love the fact that Tassie is a relatively small meteorological target. I’ve seen cold fronts mysteriously slip beneath the island, or just softly caress the south-west, and leave the populated parts basking. And ugly low pressure systems can sometimes wobble dangerously off the east coast, yet hardly land a precipitative punch.

This time the trough decided to linger over the flesh-pots of Melbourne, deluging the Victorian capital, denting it with golf ball-sized hail, and even stopping several sporting events (no mean feat in sports-mad Melbourne). In contrast the day that Lynne and I planned to climb Cradle stayed clear, warm and sunny.

Marions Lookout has to be climbed first, and there’s no way around it being sharp and steep. It’s good training for what’s to come once you amble across the plateau, past Kitchen Hut, and reach the face of Cradle itself. There’s no ambling after that – just one foot in front of the other, until it becomes one foot and one hand in front of the other.

I’m always in two or three minds when it comes to telling a first-timer what a walk or climb is like. Is it really helpful to tut, tssk and mutter things like “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet” as they gasp and pant and beg for a stop? On the other hand, will your memory of the walk be at all accurate? In my experience, the answer is “rarely”. Time, rose-coloured glasses, and neuronal glitches often combine to make my memory hazy.

In this case, however, it had only been 5 months since my last ascent. And I had plenty of reasons to remember it vividly! Fortunately Lynne was feeling particularly determined, and my hints of dire boulder scrambling ahead didn’t dent her confidence. She was more interested in seeing where I had fallen – and so was I!

The absence of snow made the site of the fall both more and less dramatic. More, because the chute looked even steeper without its cushion of snow. Less, because the snow had been intimidatingly deep. We paused for the obligatory “here’s where you nearly lost me” photo, and then it was another couple of hundred metres of scrambling before we could celebrate summiting the lovely Cradle Mountain. For me it was ascent no. 5 (or is it 6); for Lynne it was a first. Her eyes bagan to water, I must report. And why not? It was a significant ascent for someone who had so often stayed behind looking after children while I was off on mountain tops.

We topped off a superb morning by having lunch, and then finding a quiet spot to simply lie down and soak up the wonder of it all. It was a much gentler surrender to gravity than last October. It was good to be back.

No Such Thing As Bad Weather

[photo: high in the Kepler Mountains, New Zealand]

[more thoughts on walking and weather]

My colleague and friend, Cathie, has waged a war of words with terms like “bad weather”. One of her favourite quotes is from Joseph Wood Krutch:

The good thing about the country is . . . that we don’t have any bad weather at all – only a number of different kinds of good.

And Cathie’s right. The wild parts of Tasmania, New Zealand, Alaska and places like them would not look as they do; would not have the same plants and animals; wouldn’t even have the same topography, were it not for the weather. Mountains, forests and fiords come at a climatological cost.

That’s not to say that we always want to be out in the wilds when it’s blowing a gale and sleeting or snowing. But we recognise that such weather in an inherent part of the wild country that is so attractive to walkers. We adapt to the weather, not the other way around. One way to do that is to have good all weather gear, and/or to develop a positive duck-like attitude. Another is to have the flexibility to walk when the weather is expected to be fine. In that regard long-range internet weather forecasts are a great thing. I use them all the time, and they have made a big difference to my walking. For a start they can give warning of extreme conditions that are best avoided, although some familiarity with meteorology and lots of experience of local conditions is still important.

My ideal scenario in Tasmania is to start a walk on the tail-end of a cold front, especially when it looks as though it will be followed by a large, slow-moving high pressure system. This will usually bring calmer conditions, cool nights, and clear days. So while you may start the walk in cloudy or rainy conditions, the promise is that the high will come to the rescue. If it does the result will be a few days of clear weather when you’re actually among the mountains. With the exception of masochists and wilderness photographers in search of “artist’s light”, this is bliss for a bushwalker. And occasionally it does work out that way, although the weather gods often have the last laugh, and a bushwalker’s best-laid plans go oft astray. In the end we have to accept that we don’t control the weather, and making the most of it bears more fruit than shaking a fist at it.

Four days on New Zealand’s Kepler Track, west of Te Anau in Fiordland National Park, proved a good example. In Fiordland you can wait a long time for a forecast indicating a spell of clear weather. This part of the world measures its annual rainfall in metres, not millimetres, and the roaring forties bite particularly hard around here. But in planning to walk the Kepler Track, I did have some flexibility with dates. So I sat on the long-range forecasts for days trying to pick a four day period that might translate into clear weather for at least the day spent in the alpine section, at around 1400m. As I read the forecasts, I prevaricated, planned, replanned, and prevaricated again. Yes, it was spring, but the procession of cold and/or wet weather systems seemed interminable. And not knowing how this would play out on local weather patterns made it hard to commit. I wanted to pay due respect to the potential for wild weather up in those mountains. But eventually taking both local advice and the plunge, I booked the walk. We chose to do the loop walk in the less usual clockwise direction. Forecasts indicated clearer weather for day 3, the alpine day. If we went in the other direction, we’d be up there on day 2, which looked dire.

It turned out my choice was both right and wrong. Wrong because it snowed on and off throughout our entire alpine day. And right because the day before did turn out to be a savage, wet and windy day. Walkers we met at the walk’s half-way point, the Iris Burn Hut, told us they’d been literally blown over by gale-force winds. Some had even lost equipment, blown off the mountain by the wind. And they’d seen almost nothing through the rain and flying cloud in the head-down hurry to get off the mountain. And our snowy day? Well that was the other part of being wrong. Had I been invited to walk for 8 hours through sleet and snow – more than half of it steeply up hill – I probably would have declined. Yet it turned out to be one of the most brilliant days of walking I’ll ever experience.