Western Arthur Range – Day 1

April 8th, 2004 at 12:00am

Lake Cygnus campsite. 17 km today in 9.5 hours. Supposed to be here with Evan and Gaye, but I think (and hope) they decided to camp less than 1 km back up the trail. It was a long day. We left the trailhead at 9am after having camped there last night. The first 4.5 hours of walking were muddy and slippery and muddy – similar at times to Frenchman’s Cap. It was slow going most of the way and rather frustrating. We didn’t even get to start to climb until 2:30pm and from there we had a 800 m climb to the top of Mt. Thespius. Gaye seemed to be doing really well and Evan was doing good considering it was his first day of hiking in Tasmania, until that is, he slipped in the mud and hit his eye on a tree branch. It was a pretty painful hit and it slowed him down quite a bit.

Gaye and I got to the top just after 5pm and waited for Evan who showed up about 10 minutes later. It was windy and cold and cloud covered at the top – no views to be had. We continued on from there, but I think at that point the energy levels changed dramatically for the group. Evan and Gaye started dragging behind and they both seemed really tired. I tried to pick up the pace because I got my second wind and knew that we were going to be racing against dark. Gaye wanted to turn around and camp somewhere and I said no way because we were only less than 2 km from the campsite and it was surley safer to get off the ridge and out of the wind. I went ahead and just kept going in order to get myself to a safe spot. I got to the campsite about 40 minutes later and at that point it was 6:30pm and just starting to get dark. I quickly set up my tent and walked back to the junction with my headlamp on and waited. I stood there for 15 minutes, called out a few times, and just waited with my headlamp shining up the trail. No Evan or Gaye. I hope they are ok and just decided to camp up there. Hopefully for them there will be no storms tonight. I’ll set out early tomorrow to go back and find them.

Evan in the mud

Awesome views on the way up

Clouds rolling in at the top

Entry Filed under: Australia,Hiking/Trekking,Tasmania