Five days off in January – what a treat! While Kylie was focused on her Overland Track with side trips speed mission (There’s a story for another day!), I set my sights on some Abel adventuring.
Over the past year I’ve had the opportunity to skipper the little ferry (Ida Clair) on Lake St Clair (Australia’s highest ferry service!). At the top end of the lake a dozen mountains present themselves (clouds willing), the vast majority of which cannot be seen from any roadside vantage point. It’s a real treat to share these rarely sighted peaks with cruise passengers. Even when I only have Overland Track finishers on board it’s good to spin around and give them, “One last chance to farewell the mountains” they’ve been hiking through.
Of the dozen peaks surrounding the lake’s northern end, I’ve hiked to nine – Olympus, Byron, The Guardians, Gould, Minotaur, Parthenon, Hyperion*, Acropolis* and Massif. That leaves Cuvier, Manfred and Horizontal on the to-do list and all of them are Abels – what a great outing for a week off in Jan! …but wait – there’s more! Tantalisingly close to these Abels lie another trio – Tramontane, Goulds and Pyramid. Maybe, just maybe… (or am I being greedy?)
DAY ONE
At 9:30 I disembarked the ferry (thanks Skipper Steve) and by 10am I was setting out from Narcissus Hut, ironically, but only briefly, back towards Cynthia Bay. The conventional way to climb the aforementioned Abels is to traverse Mount Byron, over the ensuing saddle and up to the Cuvier Shelf. From there Mount Cuvier is a hop, skip and a jump up the ridge from which hanging a right can take you north to Mount Manfred and hanging a left can take you on a long traverse to Goulds Sugarloaf. However the Manfred notes in The Abels guidebooks say it can be climbed from Lake Marion and the Gould notes say it can be climbed from the Cuvier Valley’s Lake Petrarch. Can you see what I’m cooking?
Having been up Byron before and having Horizontal Hill (which overlooks Lake Marion) in my sights I could see an appealing traverse from Horizontal all the way to Goulds with minimal backtracking. What could possibly go wrong?
After leaving the Overland Track I followed the edge of the Marion Creek Valley through light eucalypt scrub. I had been as far as the old hut site at Nichols Junction previously en route to Gould Plateau so, when I turned left, it was new territory for me.
For some reason, after leaving the junction, I expected I’d quickly return to dry forest. I was pleasantly surprised to spend the next hour in magnificent rainforest, much like the latter part of the track to Pine Valley Hut. Once the forest is exited the track swings onto open plains with Mount Manfred directly ahead.
At a point where an ascent to Manfred’s shelf looked feasible, I dropped overnight gear beside the track and continued the final kilometre or so to Make Marion where a few hundred metres of shallow wading avoided some scrub. Eventually the western shore became embraced by delightfully open, mossy tea tree forest which made uphill progress easy until I encountered the first of what would be many scrubby challenges on this trip. After a short but energy zapping struggle I found a fairly reliable pad (I suspect this is a thing now on many of the formerly ‘untracked’ Abels) which delivered me through the scrub, up some cliffy bits and onto the very flat and open summit. When doing a roll-call of the mountains to my ferry guests I delight in saying, “…and the hill with the horizontal top is called – Horizontal Hill!”
The sandstone edges made great viewpoints to admire the surrounding peaks with The Guardians dominating the scene and Mount Gould coming a very close second. Thickly vegetated valleys and lengthy connecting ridges made the remote, trackless Abels to the north, west and south appear as daunting prospects. It is amazing that we have such remote, pristine and wild places in abundance here in Tasmania.
Early in the day I had naively thought I could potentially make a start on Manfred after knocking over Horizontal Hill. Tasmania’s untracked wilderness has a habbit of teaching lessons and the 8pm arrival back at my pack was very instructive!
DAY TWO
I clearly needed some rest! After sleeping in well after sunrise a relaxing breakfast and packup had me leaving the Marion Track at 8:30am. Button grass plains led me to the forested base of Manfred’s eastward-jutting shelves. As I started to climb, I entered delightfully open rainforest which kindly accompanied the first 150 metres of height gain. A surprising area of pseudo karst was fun to explore where a whole section of hillside appeared to have been cut away as if by a knife. House-sized boulders overlay numerous small caves and overhangs.
A short distance further up the hill I was not surprised to discover the source of the boulders. An imposing 30-metre high, freshly crumbling and very-vertical cliff was barring forward progress. A quick check of the map showed I had been heading straight for the close cluster of contours all morning.
Thankfully it was not a long detour to get around the cliff and I was soon traversing a very different world compared with the sheltered forest below. Up ahead I could see my next north-facing cliff band and chose a pandani and pencil-pine-lined gully as the most likely way up. Sure enough, the cliff-line relented enough to allow relatively easy progress to the large shelf where the sub-knee-high scrub warranted the large white patch on the 1:25k map.
Looking west, Manfred seemed to have a cheeky grin as it peered over another four bands of sedimentary cliff lines, each ominously guarded by thick vegetation as they gazed eastwards towards me. I chose a line which I optimistically hoped would have minimal cliff and maybe some open forest. I turned out to be partially correct. The forest made for steep, open-ish walking but then mossy cliffs topped with dense scoparia seemed intent on pushing me and my pack back down.Eventually the next white patch on the map was attained along with the accompanying views to the east and north. Some slightly annoying stunted myrtle forest was traversed and, as if to reward my troubles, a mossy meadow led me onto the comfortably familiar territory of a dolerite ridge!
After a short break I selected an almost level spot on the ridge, abandoned my pack, scruffed some emergency gear and scooted around the summit tower, up a chimney and along the ridge to the summit. The shelf I had ascended appeared innocuous from above with the cliffs facing invisibly away from me. Although cloud was rapidly descending, mountaintops in all directions were clearly visible. To the south the familiar outlines of Olympus, Byron, Cuvier and Goulds led the eye towards the more distant Frenchmans Cap group. In the west, Manfred’s heel pointed to the Murchison River valley, the stately Eldons and West Coast Range beyond. The Du Canes and Pelions blended together in the north with Barn Bluff the most distant feature in that direction. In the east, misty rain was gobbling up the Central Plateau while patches of intense sunlight intermittently lit up the Marion, Narcissus and Mersey valleys. A brief rainbow emanating from the flanks of Mt Gould encouraged a hasty descent to my pack by 6pm with my tent pitched and dinner on the way shortly thereafter.
