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Showing posts from July, 2015

Platform Peak

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Tuesday 21 July 2015 There was some sun during the drive to the start of the walk, but soon after starting a high cloud cover took over and remained that way for the remainder of the day. The ground was frosty and even after lunch some ponds were still frozen. Track on ascent to the plateau of Platform Peak Once out of protected areas there was a cold wind but quite a lot of the walk was through forest with plenty of understory, including one stretch where Teatree had overgrown the old vehicle track. Lots of tapes mark the route and on the climb, traverse and descent of the main massif there were also triangle markers, although those nailed on live trees have been hammered in far too tightly and most of these are in stages of either being ejected by the growing tree; quite a bundle of these were picked up off the ground where they had fallen. By far the Platform Peak was the best part of the walk. Once the forestry tracks and roads are left behind for the climb the vegetation

Mount Franklin

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Wednesday 8 July 2015 Sometime last year Neville suggested a walk to Mount Franklin and we have now settled on a day for the walk. It is a prominence of 1102 metres and is situated on the north east side of Lake Sorell in the highlands and rises about 300 metres above the lake.   It is assumed it was named after former governor John Franklin but checking at Placenames Tasmania didn’t give any history. This was a particularly cold morning and the temperature was -4 for most of the drive to Oatlands with heavy frost about, Nigel used his windscreen wiper and it turned to ice.  But apart from several fog patches on the way it was still and sunny. Along the Tunbridge Tier Road the gums were spectacularly white. We had two vehicles and there was confusion about the road to take from the highway, but thanks to mobile phone communication this was soon sorted out. A 4wd road goes reasonably close to the peak, but it was unknown how far, if at all, we would be able to drive.  However it was