Thark Bush Circuit

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, where I had told Greg we should see an old large cairn. However that could not be found and I intend going back to try to locate it.

We returned by the Thark track and were pleased to see the rerouted sections of track in good order. The whole area of the walk must have had a lot of recent rain, because there was fast flowing water and plenty of ponds full of water.

The walk was just over 8K

 

The little circuitous bit near waypoint 270 was where the wrong route was chosen and we had to change course to avoid scree

Scree above morning tea stop with the bush line on the right

Scree that was sidled above before heading down on the bush on the left side of photo