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| Approaching Pelion Gap |
In 2011, on
an autumn mission to Kia Ora Falls and Castle Crag, I was walking the Overland
Track just past Kia Ora hut around 11am.
An unlikely group of runners approached from the south.
The foursome
had light packs and were moving freely and quickly compared with me and my full
multi-day pack. One of them kindly
stopped and indulged my curiosity. They
had just run from Mersey Forest Road, through Lees Paddocks, up to the Overland
Track and were now heading north to Pelion Hut, the Arm River Track and,
finally, the Venetian Blind / Lees Paddocks Track back to their car. They were completing what they dubbed, “The
Lap of Pelion East.”
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| Wurragarra Creek before dawn. Twin Spires and Cathedral Mountain attempt to shake their shroud. |
Nine years
later, Kylie and I were looking for a winter adventure following good snow
falls a week earlier. We decided on a
combined mission to complete a trail running Lap of Pelion East followed by a three-day
snow shoeing assault on Mount Ossa.
We dedicated
a day to the drive up from Hobart with a stop in Oatlands to finish off some work
before leaving projects, e-mails and phone calls behind. Our accommodation that night was the Lees
Paddocks Track car park ready for an early start.
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| Kylie powering up a hill before Wadley's Hut |
At 5:30am
we hit the trail and hit it fast! Within
an hour we had reached the Survey Creek gate marking the start of Lees Paddocks
(or simply The Paddocks as the Lees family prefers to call them). The sunrise was hidden behind the Cathedral Plateau
and a light layer of morning cloud as we jogged along the park-like valley floor
where the Mersey River meanders silently between grassy paddocks. Several generations of mountain cattle folk
have driven their herds into this valley for summer grazing and autumn low-intensity
burning in a pattern gleaned from practices spanning countless generations of
First Nations people maintaining these rich hunting grounds.
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| Reg Wadley Memorial Hut |
Beyond
Wadley’s Hut and Judy’s Top Paddock the route becomes indistinct. It’s fine in the open myrtle forest but when
tea tree thickets close in south of Pinestone Creek navigation can be tricky. Recent
tapes headed right (west) when Pinestone is reached. I suspect they may lead to an upstream gorge
where previous trips have proved a precarious, high-level tree can be
negotiated to get over even in the biggest of winter floods. On this occasion the flow was low enough to engage
the ‘normal’ crossing – a wide slab just above the Pinestone-Mersey confluence. However, there is no longer any sign of a
track on the far side. To make matters
worse we headed towards the Mersey, drawn by the sound of impressive rapids where
we were frustratingly denied a clear view by the overcrowded scrub. The end result was 20 minutes to progress a
mere 400 metres with zero altitude gain.
(That’s actually good going by Tassie standards where some scrub makes
100 metres per hour a substantial achievement!)
At a beautiful bend in the river we were on our way again.
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| Clinton surveying Pinestone Creek |
Soon after
the bend the route gradually moves away from the Mersey River and starts a
steady climb, contouring its way to a crossing of Kia Ora Creek midway between
the river and Kia Ora Falls.
Interestingly, soon after leaving the river we came across the recent
line of tapes arriving from our right (north).
This appears to indicate a new route has been taped that avoids the tea
tree section but, sadly, would also avoid the beautiful bend where the river
tumbles spectacularly through a narrow channel.
As I write this I can see the new route is marked on Open Street Map
which also shows the correct location of Pinestone Creek’s meeting with the
Mersey. Google Maps and Tasmania’s
official government source of maps have Pinestone entering at the bend instead
of where it actually enters roughly 400 metres downstream. I digress!
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| Unnamed creek between Pinestone and Kia Ora |
Our first
encounter with Kia Ora Creek was a lively affair with Kylie swinging stylishly from
a horizontal tree while icy waters lapped dangerously close to her nether
regions. The track is done with gentle contouring
at this point and gains 100 metres in altitude in only 500 metres distance. While that doesn’t sound much it’s the
gradient of a Sky Race or Vertical Kilometre where you have to string ten of
those bad boys in a row! Incidentally, our
total climb from the Mersey River to the Overland Track was 200 metres elevation
gain over two kilometres which is the same gradient for mountain running
championships where five of those are strung together.
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| Crossing Kia Ora Creek |
At the Overland
Track superhighway we swung north where snazzy bridges made our second encounters
with the creeks Pinestone and Kia Ora smooth and uneventful. On the approach to Pelion Gap care had to be
taken with slippery, snow-covered boardwalks while the cloud lifted conveniently
to show off the dazzling white slopes of Mounts Ossa, Doris and Pelion East. Behind us the Du Cane Range was reluctant to
shrug its misty mantle.
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| Mounts Ossa and Doris |
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| Kylie at Pelion Gap |
On the
descent to Pelion Hut I remembered my last ‘running’ descent from the Gap (albeit
it in the other direction) during the Cradle Mountain Run in 2018. It’s downhill – it should be fast n easy. Oddly, with two or three dozen k’s under my
belt, even the downhill starts to be hard work.
Kylie was flying, seemingly oblivious to the previous 20 kilometres, while
I battled the demons in my head and struggled to keep up.
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| Descending Pelion Gap |
Over the
next hour and a half we undulated our way past Lake Ayr and Reedy Lake with
Mount Oakleigh slowly slipping behind us.
Next we engaged the steep and gorgeous descent, through tall, dark rainforest
forest before emerging into brilliant sunshine at The Paddocks. Even the Du Cane Range came out to enjoy the blue
sky as we celebrated our completion of ‘the lap’. Reluctantly we turned our backs on the view
and retraced our early-morning steps returning to the car via Pine Hut Plain
and the brief, final climb to the car.
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| Bishops Peak, Twin Spires, Cathedral Mountain, Castle Crag and Mount Massif (obscured) overlook a sunny Lees Paddocks and Hut |
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| Pine Hut Plain, Mersey River, Premier Peak and Dean Bluff |
A Strava record of our run can
be found here:
