The Eldon Range

I shall refer to this group as “The Eldons” as opposed to the “Pyramid” Eldons or as they are colloquially known as, the Minor/Little Eldons.

The Pyramid Group and The Eldon Group encompasses 10 Abels and lies in the western central region of the Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park. Having had a brief taste of the Minor Eldons climbing Pyramid Mountain, Rocky Hill and Camp Hill during Easter of 2022, we knew the main Eldons Range would be no small effort!

I can confirm, and the others in our party expressed the same sentiments: The Eldons are some of the toughest multiday bushwalking we have EVER done. Almost entirely untracked, with dense alpine scrub to constantly push through, limited water and long days set our Eldons trip apart from almost all the other ranges we have climbed over the last few years.

The Eldons are no place for the inexperienced, those not confident in navigation or that don’t relish lugging heavy packs up and down over steep, scrubby terrain for hours on end! But for all its difficulties, of which there are many, it is an immensely beautiful part of the world. We spent ten full days exploring The Eldons and still didn’t even scratch the surface of the untouched nature of this mostly hidden part of Tasmania.

And before you read each individual day maybe check out the nine things I would change for our trip to The Eldons on the blog!

It would take three of our ten days just to reach the first Abel of our trip. Three days of heavy packs on our backs, tenacious scrub and long stretches between water to feel like we had reached “The Eldons”. And then the real work started.

Day 1 - Lyell Highway to Pine Camp.

8:08 Hours, 10.5km, 888m Elevation Gain.

Our journey began with the walk into Pine Camp (also referred to as Bowl Camp) below the summit of Rocky Hill, from the small carparking area on the Lyell Highway using the same route we had scouted the previous Easter. A delightful campsite on the edge of the minor Eldon Range. It is a full day’s walking to reach camp and a detailed description can be found here. The only difference with this trip and our previous one is that this trip was in burning sun, whereas the last was in rain. This trip we hauled litres of water, the last trip it was running off our faces!

It is important to note that Pine Camp, during the wetter months, has abundant flowing water. On this trip we found whilst there was still water in some of the deeper pools around camp, it was nowhere near as fast flowing or abundant. Something to keep in mind if visiting in the drier summer months.

Day 2 - Pine Camp to Five Duck Tarn.

8:42 Hours, 9.7km, 512m Elevation Gain.

The real work begins the moment you leave the lovely squishy pineapple grass walking that surrounds Pine Camp. This was the part of the trip I had been dreading. In order to climb any of the Eldons (minor or major) from this direction one must first climb up to the Rocky Hill Ridge. Luckily we knew where to find the pad in a small tree outcrop from our last visit. This pad leads nicely up using what appears to be water drains, but as is usually the case out this way, it just up and disappears.

Then it is scoparia city! It is a slow grind upwards trying to go through, around, up or over varying nasty patches of scoparia. Gone was the hot weather of yesterday, and it was now raining. As much as I had been dreading this section, we managed to pick a pretty reasonable line and were soon standing atop the ridge. From memory I knew we at least had open-ish ridge walking and pads from here to Mediation Hill.

I wandered off out front following the pad. Over the rocky outcrops that we had seen a spectacular sunset from last trip, down the first small rise and up the next rise. Along I wandered my head down to avoid the cold winds. Zero views ahead of us, just mist and shadows. We literally couldn’t see anything.

Part way down a small decent something felt off, and I asked the others to check if we were on course. It always pays to have second scouts. And it turned out in the mist we had been following a very decent pad that drops off the wrong ridge. Bummer! A short backtrack up and across the correct ridge and we continued towards Mediation Hill.

We reached the top of Mediation Hill just as a glimpse of sun came out to warm our faces. Simon was laying face down on the gravel, which we all thought was hilariously silly until we realised how warm it was and soon joined him! None of us knew what to expect from here. This was as far as we had been into The Eldons on our previous trip when we had turned towards Pyramid Mountain.

We weren’t expecting any tracks and just started wandering downwards, using whatever animal pads we could and somehow stumbled on an old cut track. Now don’t get excited - cut track out this way just means someone, decades ago, trimmed the taller sections of scrub back a bit. But it was easy enough to follow, and was going in the right direction! The descent was initially steep but then levelled into reasonably open walking.

Sticking to the cut track we reached a sort of junction. The cut track clearly went left - we could see the cuts on the scrub and a very, very VERY obvious pad - but, someone had gone to a lot of effort to place a stack of wood/branches over the track. That normally indicates “do not go this way”. We hunted around and couldn’t find anything better, so decided to ignore the branches and follow the very obvious track. And you can guess how that ended. Goodness knows where that track was supposed to lead to, but after a while it wasn’t heading where we wanted, so we scrub bashed back over to where we needed to be and relocated another cut track!

By this stage the rain had finally stopped and we were all looking forward to lunch at the South Eldon Creek. Pads, cut-off timber and even one or two pieces of ribbon now led us through baurea and open forest. Many times we would find ourselves off the “cut track” and need to spend time locating it, as the alternative was scrub bashing. We had enough of that ahead, thanks!

Alas, there was no cool, refreshing water flowing at the South Eldon Creek - it was completely dry. It was not a good sign. And so began the near constant search and/or fixation on water that would haunt us for the next eight days. On the northern side of the creek we sought shade for lunch in some lovely forest. It was an effort trying to work up the energy to push on in the now very warm afternoon.

After lunch we weaved up and down, but mostly up, through alternating sections of openish forest walking and dense scrub. Always looking for the easiest path forwards. Always, always hunting for evidence of cuts in the timber sections, sometimes finding them, sometimes not. Sections of button grass sprinkled through the walking occasionally.

It was always a relief when we found evidence of pads or cut track as the walking became much, much easier in these sections and the alternatives were not enjoyable. In one section of forest we were following a cut section and landed at the base of what we referred to as a mini Moss Ridge! Climby, steep and short lived, but kinda fun even with our big heavy packs on!

This broke out onto our final challenge before camp. Open walking through button grass mixed with thigh and/or chest high tea tree. Not terribly hard, but we were all tired and hot from the afternoon sun. The nine kilometres had taken nine hours (the return journey took us 7 hours). Slow, hard, gruelling work.

Five Duck Tarn was a welcoming sight. But there was one last surprise in store. The campsite is somewhat hidden, away from the tarn itself, and took us several minutes to locate. We were here. Two days in and already feeling it. It was time to fight the flies, have some dinner and rest up before tomorrow. Day three promised to be harder yet. Oh and have I mentioned we still hadn’t even climbed an Abel thus far?!

Day 3 - Five Duck Tarn to Lake Ewart.

10:47 Hours, 9.61 km, 365m Elevation Gain.

When you are moving less than a kilometre an hour you know the going is tough. This was a tough day for all of us. I can only describe it as scrubby, scrubbier and diabolical. It was at times just plain unenjoyable. Ugly, grunting, sweaty hard work. I am a very positive person generally and always find the bright side, but this pushed just about every button we all had!

The day began early (every day bar one began early to beat the heat and/or allow enough daylight hours to complete our objective) and we were all carrying extra water. What weight advantage we had gained by leaving a food drop at Five Duck Tarn we immediately lost when we each added a minimum of 2.5 - 3L of water to our packs.

First we climbed up and out of Five Duck Tarn over pretty easy button grass. A few pads led us through the initial sections of scrub we encountered. Multiple minor climbs and descents followed with the scrub getting thicker the further we pushed north-west. We were aiming to hit the High Dome saddle where we would turn west.

The scrub below the High Dome saddle was horrible. I cannot even think of any redeeming factors for it. We took turns forcing our way upwards with it fighting us the whole way. If there is a cut track here we could not locate it for love or money! Everything grabbed, poked or tripped us up.

After much hard work and a whole lot of colourful language, we finally breached the High Dome saddle and were so happy to see it was open walking over low alpine vegetation for a bit. Thank you mountains! And as an added bonus we could see some of the beauty that our height and clear view now afforded us. Hot yes, but spectacular too.

Turning west we picked up a very obvious pad that lead upwards from the saddle to the unnamed high point. We thought the views were good before. At the top of this unnamed high point they literally stopped us in our tracks, with a clear view directly across to Eldon Bluff. It looks massive (massif?) indeed! More immediately, we could see across to the small tarns over the connecting plateau and hoped they held some water for us. We were rather depending on it, both for a top up for later as well as for an overnight stay in several day’s time.

The descent off the unnamed high point began easy enough with a pad and even a cairn but then once again we ended up in some horrendous scrub (story of the trip). Bursting out of the scrub we would land on a cut track, only for it to completely and utterly vanish again. It was like a never ending to and fro.

We lunched under the collective shade of several trees, applying yet more sunscreen on our greasy, sweaty skin and sipped water whilst discussing how we all wished we could find more water and ate anything high in calories in a desperate attempt to lift our dwindling energy levels. It wasn’t only the physical challenges that were tiring us, but the constant off track navigating, hunting for pads and second-guessing of ‘is this the best way?’ was mentally draining.

We topped out over the next high point before pushing down through more generally think scrub until coming out onto the buttongrass plateau to the east of Castle Mountain. It was a relief to see the tarns held water, including the largest one which we planned to camp at for a night on the way back from Lake Ewart. The shallow tarns made for surprisingly warm - and rather unrefreshing - water but it was still clean water, so will filled up and pressed on.

A alternating pattern of open walking and scrub followed until we were at the top of the final descent to Lake Ewart. And as if the day hadn’t been character building enough the dial turned up to level 50 billion on the hard scale! So many swear words, so much energy and such nasty, nasty, NASTY, awful scrub. Like soul destroying thick.

I have never worked so hard in my life to bash down through scrub. Jess and I were out front whilst the boys bought up the rear. Every direction we tried to turn we were met with almost impossible alpine vegetation to push through. While we pressed on as best we could, we questioned how on earth we were going to get through coming up from the other direction. Even with gravity helping us was not enough. We would simply HAVE to find a better way to return. (We did take an alternate route on the way out of Lake Ewart and managed to find an amazing almost scrub free route back up.)

We were desperate to reach the lake and it was sighs of relief all round as the scrub finally spat us out into buttongrass. But of course nothing is easy in the Eldons - and that includes actually reaching Lake Ewart.

Our joy at reaching the button grass was short lived. It was not quite the saunter to the lake’s edge we had pictured. First we had to cross multiple creeks blocking our forwards path. Whilst we were all super happy to see water, these outlet creeks were deep and not at all simple to cross. Some we would follow for a few minutes to locate an easy crossing. One took us precious time we didn’t have just to to locate a crossing point using a submerged log. The log was skinny and just reached both banks. Bender bravely went first then trod on the end of the log to hold it in place, so I could cross, then Jess, then Simon.

But like people selling steak knives on pay TV - wait, there’s more! We raced (well moved as quick as our exhausted legs would carry us after 10 hours of bush bashing) down to the lake’s edge eagerly anticipating our scenic campsites for the night and found nothing but disappointment. The edge of the lake was muddy and silty. So on we trudged around the lake trying to find the “campsite”. We had heard there was even a log book here? Under some pines Bender said - he had seen some photos of where a friend had camped there.

We walked around the southern end of the (surprisingly big) lake, crossing more creeks and always scouting for campsites. Ducking into some large Pencil pines I found what could pass as a couple of campsites. Not the best sites but they were sheltered and kinda flat, and we were tired and none of us wanted to take another step. The Eldons had whipped us today. It was time to pitch the tent, fight the mozzies and flies again and collapse. The last three days had been hard - really hard - and we all wished we had a rest day in the itinerary, but we didn’t. At least tomorrow we would get to climb an Abel or two…

Follow each of the following days adventures to all our Abels by clicking the links below.

Day 4 - Lake Ewart to Eldon Crag.

Day 4 - Eldon Crag to Eldon Bluff

Day 5 - Lake Ewart to Dome Hill

Day 6 - Lake Ewart to Tarn Camp including Castle Mountain

Day 7 - Tarn Camp to Five Duck including High Dome

Day 8 - Five Duck Tarn to Tramontane, return.

Day 9 - Five Duck Tarn to Pine Camp.

Day 10 - Pine Camp to car.

The final Eldon mountain…. Our trip to Eldon Peak in October 2023.