Castle Mountain

Date: 19th January 2023 - Summit: 1208m

Photo credits: Ben Wells, Tracey Orr, Simon Kendrick, Jess McDonald

Day 6 of our trip begins now. Find the previous days adventures here.

Although Castle Mountain looked scrubby from every vantage point we’d seen over the previous days, we weren’t dreading it nearly as much as climbing up and out of Lake Ewart! Three days earlier, we had descended towards the lake through what appeared to be the scrubby gates of hell! Experience that torture here.

But before we could even consider summiting Castle Mountain, we would need to reach our planned campsite at the tarns that lay at the plateau to the east. We had spent the evening before planning our assault to climb out of Lake Ewart - and it was worth it.

Using the wonders of technology from the comfort of our tents, we had roughly mapped out an alternate route back up to the plateau to the south. Our new route would follow a nearer steep ridge and bear more westerly. We hoped it would avoid the almost-impenetrable scrub we had faced previously.

With another big day ahead we set off early, wet weathers on to protect us from the drizzle and drenched vegetation, around the southern edge of the lake, over the minor creeks (which were fuller now due to the previous days rain and the mornings drizzle) and across the small button grass fields until we reached the edge of the not-so-enchanted forest.

Eenie meanie miney mo, we chose between a pandani and a myrtle to enter the forest. The myrtle won and rewarded us with the most lovely and open understory. We knew this couldn’t last, but boy was it a lovely surprise! Up through the forest we went until it eventually gave out to very, very steep baurea. Simon led up here as we part-walked, part-climbed up through the half-metre thick mess of thin vines. Having your boots endlessly snag on baurea is one of the many character building challenges of bushwalking in Tasmania, but all of us were quietly appreciating the lack of any real scrub. Could this really be happening?

In what seemed to good to be true, we broke out onto the large plateau without encountering any of the impossibly dense tea tree and eucalypts, and thick bands of scoparia we had been trapped in on our decent. The worst we found was some patches of tea tree that we needed to push through, but even this was short lived. Yay! The weather was still pretty miserable but the climb up and out of Lake Ewart had been anything but!

It was wet and cold but every now and then a little light would penetrate the cloud cover and we would yell out “sun” and lift our faces to the sky for a few minutes of warming rays, only to have it disappear again. Heading over to the eastern end of the largest tarn, we located a small cleared area and got to work pitching the tents. Our plan was to climb into the tents and warm/rest up for a few hours, hopefully waiting out the rain. As we had made such good time up from Lake Ewart - less than half of the three hours we’d estimated - we could afford the luxury of a mid-morning rest.

According to a detailed Garmin Weather Forecast, the rain was supposed to stop around lunch time for our planned step off. It didn’t, but it had at least reduced to a light drizzle. Still, it meant dragging our saturated wet weathers back on again, which is never enjoyable. Leaving the tents behind we crossed the button grass, Castle Mountain looking wonderfully close a mere couple of kilometres away.

The first band of scrub warmed us up quickly and we were soon removing the thermal layers we had put on under our wet weathers. Perhaps we were becoming accustomed to the Eldons scrub, or perhaps it was just slightly nicer scrub, but we were making fast progress through it. Even the semi-frequent patches of scoparia weren’t causing us too much grief.

A minor buttongrass field beyond the first band of scrub gave us a little respite before we started the work in earnest. Up we went as the climb now jacked steeply. Taking it in turns, we ducked, weaved and pushed our way upwards, always looking for the path of least resistance whilst constantly trying to avoid dropping into multiple small gullies hidden within the vegetation.

Very occasionally, we would find semi-decent pads to follow. As we neared the top, sections of rock assisted us forward and we even spied three cairns! Happy dance indeed! The weather was still clagged in and the likelihood of views from the summit minimal, but we were all in good spirits as the climb wasn’t nearly as difficult as we had anticipated.

A small, and thankfully still quite grippy scree field deposited us near the summit, and it was only minutes from there and we were standing on the rocky top of Castle Mountain! The mist was swirling, it was wet and cold and we had zero views but you can’t always have it all.

We headed over to where our GPSs were saying the high point was - though it didn’t look higher - and then doubled back to the cairned high point and placed our hands on that too. It is a long way to come back if you go to the wrong high point. It had taken us under two hours from camp to the summit and we knew we would be even faster on the return with gravity assisting.

Dropping just off the summit to get out of the wind we chatted and snacked, waiting patiently in the hope the low cloud might clear long enough for some views. The mist did briefly break in small sections but it was clear that we would not be spoilt with glorious Eldons vistas today, so we packed up and started the descent.

As we had predicted, our descent was much quicker, gravity assisting us to push through the vegetation and we popped out onto the button grass below just as the sun was peering from the clouds! What a delight it was to feel the warmth of the sun - and to know that when we reached camp we might even be able to dry some of our wet gear!

Even better we were back before 4pm, so we would have a lazy afternoon to rest up, on top of our midday siesta. Today was turning out top be very indulgent indeed!

The sun stayed long enough to dry out most of our gear but the drizzle returned for the evening and we’d again retreat into our tents to cook dinner and prep for the next day’s walking.

Find the next day’s adventures here.