Day 4: Cairns, An Eagle and a Hut
There’s something they don’t tell you about a peaceful, still night in a tent. Condensation! All of us, bar TimO, woke to drips of condensation in our tents. (Tim had wisely slept a little away from the lake, under the shelter of some pencil pine trees.) Apparently the lack of a breeze, a cold night, humid air pooling near standing water, and our own breath, had all combined to create lots of vapour that condensed on our tent flies.
Ah well, the sun was shining, and almost all was right with the world. Our tents would dry soon enough. So we ate breakfast, and packed up for a day of cairn finding. Larry was ready well before the rest of us, earning a mock rebuke or two. The fact is he had the scent of cairns in his nostrils, or more accurately he had GPS data that showed we’d camped only a few hundred metres from a Ritter cairn. And sure enough, only 20 minutes after breaking camp, we saw a pyramid-shaped object on a rise just ahead of us. That felt too easy, so at first I thought it just a bush. But as we drew closer, we saw it was indeed a lichen-encrusted pyramidal pile of rocks: surely a Ritter cairn!
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[Our first Ritter Cairn of the trip] |
After easily finding more cairns of similar ilk, we knew we were on the right track. Indeed Ritter’s Track was now looking somewhat trackish. We could still lose our way at times, and we did, but increasingly we found ground trail to show us the way. I was beginning to change my opinion of Ritter’s Track.
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[We started to find ground trail between cairns] |
In this section at least, it was obviously followed by walkers and fishers. In fact some of these late-coming users of the historic route showed their zeal – or perhaps anxiety – by placing small intermediate cairns to make the route more obvious. We could tell they were much more recent because of their smaller stature and the lack of lichen growth on them. And here I had an idle thought: could scientists do a study on how long it takes for lichen to grow on rocks using Ritter cairns as a baseline?
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[Some cairns were hard to miss] |
We wandered on through undulating country, always within view of lakes. But most of our route kept to higher ground. This was originally so that cattle and horse riders could avoid the boggiest ground. For us it made for a mazy, meandering path, but it had the advantage of keeping our boots dry.
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[Another cairn ... we're on track] |
Again our destination wasn’t certain. We’d looked on the map, and considered some of the lakes on the southern side of Forty Lakes Peak, such as Lake Evans or Lake Halkyard, as possibilities. But they were well to the side of Ritter’s Track. Our deliberations were interrupted by another wedge-tailed visitation. The eagle flew around us a number of times, at one stage “escorted” fairly vigorously by a currawong. After a while it landed on a rock a little above us, and sat there checking us out. We returned the compliment, waiting with phones and cameras ready for when it took off again. It obliged, and eventually flew off to a crag that had a large bush on it. A nest, perhaps?
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[A wedge-tailed eagle circles above] |
The eagle experience brought us sharply to the present, and reminded us of just where we were. I’d been dragging my feet a little, finding that the usual day 4 energy – by which time you’ve usually got your walking legs – was yet to come. But stopping and watching the eagle, and seeing not only this magnificent wild creature, but also the wild crags and lakes all around me, lifted my spirits. I felt deeply privileged to be out here with good friends on such a day.
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[Tim D contemplates the route ahead] |
And now we found we were quite close to Lake Evans. It made a good lunch spot, though it was far too early to descend and check out camping possibilities. So after lunch we determined we’d march on in the direction of Forty Lakes Peak. Tim D kept calling it Forty Thousand Lakes Peak, which is closer to the actual number of lakes nearby. My memory of the peak was from a decade or more back, when some friends and I had climbed it from the Lake Nameless side. I recalled it being some 30-40 minutes from lake to peak. Slightly buoyed by that, we decided we’d make for Nameless, which had the bonus of the nearby Ironstone Hut.
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[Ironstone Hut sitting above Lake Nameless] |
It was still early in the afternoon, and the blue sky smiled on us. We pushed on around the sometimes rocky flanks of Forty Lakes Peak, and started our descent. It proved far longer and harder than my memory had it. Also Ritter’s cairns were now rare or non-existent. Instead we made a bee-line for Lake Nameless, striking scrub, boulder fields and general rough going. We finally staggered to the hut only a little short of two hours after leaving the tops.
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[Relaxing at Ironstone Hut] |
We‘d earlier considered other overnight options, as not everyone in the party was a fan of huts. But once at Ironstone we found there were no other hut occupants, and enough okay tent sites for the hut-averse. It was settled, we’d stay at Ironstone Hut. Tim D teased me about this always being my plan, saying I was the group’s surrogate Jim. Jim is a usual fixture in our walking group, a died-in-the-wool hutophile. He’d missed this walk for health reasons, but we all agreed this was one part of our walk that he would genuinely have enjoyed. Given it’s a character hut, with bunks, mattresses, a wood-burner, and table and benches, what wasn’t to like? (Later we even lit a fire so we could show Jim what he missed.)
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[This one's for Jim!] |
We cooked and ate outside in the beautiful clear evening air. TimO had a spare berry crumble dessert, and Tim D a chocolate mousse, which we combined to surprisingly good effect. After that culinary treat, Larry was content to head tentward for an early night, while the rest of us repaired to the hut for some rowdy rounds of cards. TimO and I combined magnificently to thrash Tim D and Libby at a round of 500. I then resumed my non-playing coaching role, and helped TimO to another gallant defeat in a game of Yaniv. Each card in the bespoke pack had a Tasmanian mountain name on it, and TimO may have quietly complained that my calling out the name and details of every mountain I had climbed was a tad distracting. Sometimes the best efforts of a coach aren’t fully appreciated.
