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Showing posts from June, 2014

Simmons Hill

Thursday 19 June 2014 On the eastern shore of the Derwent River the Meehan Range offers quite a number of walks and we decided that the Meehan geocache series would constitute quite a good one as well as allow a swag of caches to be attempted. Things didn’t go quite as expected because we were looking for a bike track going uphill near an old munitions store site and missed it. A cement base was eventually spotted but no bike track and we decided to just climb up the slope through the bush, a 180 metre height gain. It was only on the return walk that it was realised there was a track that had been put in since our previous visit; this would have allowed us to do the walk in reverse. The main drawback from the way we went was that the first two caches had already been bypassed and this necessitated a 450 metre each way double back to collect them. From then on it was easy walking along and over Simmons Hill then down the switchbacks of the fairly new bike track, which still had the t

Thark Bush Circuit

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Tuesday 17 June 2014 When we looked at the mountain it was fine and with only a wisp or two of cloud, so the decision that Greg and I made was to walk over the northern end of Thark Ridge and follow the animal pads down to the old fire trail. I told Greg that when I last went there the pads went most of the way down and avoided all the plentiful rock screes. As the descent started a large scree was soon reached but fortunately by veering left an open area was located and from then on it was mostly not very difficult; the exception was one small patch thick bush growing in a sheltered spot. One surprise was the amount of ascent that was involved once on the old fire trail to the track junction coming off the Thark saddle; which we both thought was fairly level. I could remember beyond this junction that the old fire trail became obscure in places and obvious in others, but could not find any clear bits. After searching about for a while we decided just to climb back up to Thark, whe

Jubilee and Middle Island Ridges

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Tuesday 10 June 2014 It was fine and foggy but fortunately the fog was soon left behind once at the departure point at the Cascade Track. At the first junction I was unsure if it was the alternative track I was planning to use, but fortunately Adrian was aware of the correct one and we made our way up to cross the fire trail. In due course we were at the start of what I have called the Jubilee Ridge track, which to my surprise Adrian was aware of. This track must get a bit of use as it is quite obvious and mostly clear, although there were a couple of trees down and one covered over several metres of track. Once over the north south bike track the way forward is all over scree, but a series of cairns does mark the 270 metres to the Lenah Valley track. It is only a short walk to reach the spot where the Middle Island track descends and we stopped just before Johnsons Hut site on a sunny outcrop for lunch. Then down to the hut site and from there we continued passing three more old h