Eldon Bluff

Date: 17 January 2023 - Summit: 1361m

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

This adventure continues on from Eldon Crag. Find that here.

We’d hoped that Eldon Bluff would be the smaller of the two frogs we would eat today! Having already summited Eldon Crag earlier in the day, it was time to make our way towards Eldon Bluff’s lofty summit. Large boulders lay between ourselves and the high point. Well, large boulders, weary legs, tired bodies and burning sun that is!

The Abels does not exactly recommend climbing both Eldon Crag and Eldon Bluff from Lake Ewart on the same day, due to the length of time required to cover all the difficult ground. But without a spare day up our sleeve to return as two separate trips, this wasn’t an option for us. Besides, none of us wished to revisit the scrubby torture we had endured from Lake Ewart again, so summiting both in one day was our aim. We just hoped we’d be back at camp before dark. Best get to it!

Leaving the summit plateau of Eldon Crag - after collecting some precious water from yabby holes - we climbed back up and down the unnamed high point between Eldon Crag and Eldon Bluff, which deposited us below the enormous and rather intimidating boulders that seemed to rise upwards before us like a giant rocky beanstalk!

I could feel the heat radiating off the rock like hot coals in a BBQ. With no obvious cairns or markers in sight, it was time to start picking our way carefully up through the boulder field at Eldon Bluff’s western end. The rock was dry and grippy at least. This is not the place you would want to be if the rock is wet, as black moss clung to the boulders. This stuff is not a walker’s friend in the wet!

Down low, the boulders were easy enough to climb up and over, or jump from one rock to the next. As we gained height though, the rock increased in size markedly, as did the holes and gaps between them. It was beginning to remind me a little of Mount Pelion West. Jess and I had Simon and Bender out front, just in case we rounded a large boulder to a not-so-nice drop behind it. Veering south ever so slightly, we took advantage of a small amount of greenery and some larger shale, leading up through some of the bigger boulders.

Slowly and methodically, we picked a path upwards. When one path ended in too big a gap between the giant boulders, we would backtrack slightly or head a little left or a little right to find a way forward.

I kept waiting for these humungous boulders I had read about to magically appear, but they never did. Perhaps it was just the fact that we had selected a great path up and through the boulders? Perhaps it was because we have all done far sketchier climbs (Federation Peak anyone?) or maybe it was just our eagerness to be summit bound that had us enjoying this section of the day more than we had thought when looking towards it from Eldon Crag?

The large boulders soon gave way to smaller rock sections that were interspersed with pockets of easy to travel vegetation and then this gave way to my favourite plants of the trip - pineapple grass! Oh the soft spongy crunch of that under your feet is a true joy.

We swung wider south, seeking out the now increasing swathes of pineapple grass as we began to cross the wide, long and wonderfully flat summit plateau. We were almost 10 hours into what had been a tough day at the office. This lovely section of flat and open walking was precious indeed. The gradient had levelled, the walking was easy and after a few hundred metres of walking across to our south east we could see the summit!

Sadly - though not surprisingly - none of the many shallow tarns and pools up there held water. Black and grey cracks in the ground were the only evidence of water being present, many months ago. Not to matter, we still had our Eldon Crag water reserves and were minutes from reaching our second summit of the day.

One by one, we reached the high point and shared hugs all round. All of us pleasantly surprised at how much easier and faster it had been to reach our second summit of the day than we had thought it was going to be, and we would even enjoy a little time here. We were grateful we had visited the more distant Eldon Crag first.

After spending time wandering the plateau and taking in the expansive views, we took off our boots to stretch, cool and dry our feet (our new favourite summit activity, and increasingly necessary to preserve our feet over many days of walking). We enjoyed a late lunch and momentarily (and somewhat insanely) considered a direct descent off the eastern face of the Bluff! Note: This is definitely not recommended!

Commonsense prevailed and before long it was time to pop our boots back on and begin the long journey back to Lake Ewart. Back across the summit plateau, slowly down the giant rocks, gently down the steep chute, up and down and around the huge dolerite columns, back across the Dome Hill saddle, down the scrubby ridge and over the button grass plains back to camp.

Saying it like that makes it all of sound so simplistic and easy. But the harsh reality is that to combine Eldon Bluff and Eldon Crag from Lake Ewart was, for all four of us, one of the hardest days we have ever encountered in all our years of bushwalking. A fifteen-hour day-walk that challenged us all and left us utterly spent by the time we reached our tents.

But for all the trials we experienced on that very, very long day, we also experienced laughter, camaraderie and a sense of achieving something pretty special in a very remarkable place of the world. And without the hardships, perhaps we would not have appreciated all the good bits quite as much.

It was a little after 8:30pm when our weary souls reached the tents back at Lake Ewart. I barely had the energy to cook dinner and was tempted to skip it and go straight to bed, but these are the times you need to eat. We all ate, sitting silently all of us maybe a little in shock that we had climbed both Eldon Crag and Eldon Bluff and made it back just before dark.

It didn’t take too much convincing to agree a small sleep in was deserved before summiting Dome Hill the next day.

Find the next day’s adventures here.