Since our winter Overland Track side trips missions last year (Take One and TakeTwo), Kylie went on to complete the track with all 12 side trips, not once but twice! Amazingly the track reopened after bushfires the very day of Kylie’s February ticket and she completed all side trips in three days of fast packing. Another ticket became available in March and the resulting 34-hour, single-push effort was the subject of a guest post on Trail Flow.
When off-season Overland Track passes went on ‘sale’ in
early May I was able to snaffle a ticket for 1st June. I wasn’t sure how close I could get to
Kylie’s time so I set myself the broad goal of finishing anywhere under 40
hours for the 130km and 6,000m ascent.
At 5am my adventure began in earnest. After setting out from Ronny Creek, Crater
Falls and Lake slipped swiftly by as did Marions Lookout and the Cradle
Plateau. With the slightest glimpse of
dawn on the horizon I ditched my overnight bag at the junction and headed
up. The super-familiar ascent of Cradle
went without a hitch and the Weindorfer memorial plaque made a good foreground
for my first side-trip pic.
Kylie’s single-push mission has attracted significant
attention from some seriously fast Tassie trail runners. We fully expect our FKT reign to be
short-lived and I half expected I may not be the only person to have a crack on
1st June. With this in mind,
as I headed down Cradle, I was not at all surprised to see a tiny light bobbing
along the plateau with the unmistakable gait of a trail runner. We met right on the junction. “G’day!
Where are you heading?” I asked.
“Barn Bluff” came the reply. Phew!
Leap-frogging the other runner en route to Barny was an
entertaining aside as the sun rose over the Cirques bathing my second side trip
in a reddish glow and highlighting the remaining three peaks I would encounter
much later in the day. Down at Lake Will
(side trip #3), the picturesque beach featured a mini lagoon formed by the
small stream and concentric curves of foam from the surf whipped up by a stiff
north-westerly. Blue sky, whispy-white clouds, a stately pencil pine and the
statuesque Barn Bluff completed the scene and inspired me onwards.
Approaching Lake Windermere I was feeling good as I paused
to chat with Ranger Shelley. On the other side of the lake, it was great fun to
encounter this year’s Cradle Mountain Run winner, Angus Tolson, out for a
casual 50km out and back on the first day of the year such a mission is
permissible. As a relatively new and amazingly casual trail runner, the
near-record-breaking performance by Angus back in February was a joy to behold.
The now-burnt Pine Forest Moor invoked mixed feelings as I
contemplated the future of Tasmania’s unique and sensitive vegetation while
also marvelling at the rapid growth and recovery of the snow gums and button
grass moorlands. The Forth Valley
Lookout (#4) showed the tongues of burnt out area stretching part-way down
Henry Creek without making it to the forest floor. The wet understory of the
Lemonthyme forests live to fight another summer!
The lookout also prompted me to shift my gaze towards side
trip number 6, Mount Oakleigh, brooding on the other side of the valley. While it still felt like morning (it was
almost 1pm), I started to realise sunset was likely to happen somewhere on
Oakleigh. This would mean Ossa, Pelion
East and all the waterfalls would be in the dark – fun!
The small hill on PFM offered a brief reprieve from the
burnt area but it was a welcome change when the descent to Pelion Creek and
Frog Flats beyond meant I was leaving last summer’s destruction behind for
good.
The climb to Pelion Plains, the side trip to Old Pelion Hut
(side trip #5) and even the climb to Mount Oakleigh didn’t feel too
burdensome. However, it’s amazing the
way feelings can change as the sun starts dipping dangerously close to the
horizon. I had hoped to watch sunset
from the Oakleigh summit but had to settle for bidding my solar companion
farewell from the first, false summit. That made for a psychologically challenging
first crossing of the broad valley that leads to the trail end overlooking
Oakleigh’s famous pillars. There was
still enough sunset to make for lovely photos so I found a new spring in my
step as I headed back over the broad valley.
The descent back to Pelion Plains by torchlight was swift and at 6:00pm
I was back on the main track.
At Pelion Gap the enormity of my mission started to sink
in. Here I was, roughly halfway through
my vertical gain, well under halfway through my distance and about to start
climbing Tassie’s highest mountain on a dark, frosty night with a brisk
north-westerly howling a gale. If
negativity was going to start getting me down at this point, it had no hope in
the face of a mass coronal ejection. A
few clear, vertical strobes seen out of the corner of my eye heralded the start
of an aurora australis display that would keep me company all the way up and
down both Ossa (#7) and Pelion East (#8).
What a treat!
It’s amazing how a one-hour fitful rest can restore optimism. As I passed through Pinestone Valley I started running some times through my head. “1am at the Gap, 2am at Kia Ora, 3-4am at Fergusson and D’Alton, 5am at Hartnett, 6am at Windy, 8am Pine Valley, 10am Narcissus, a 4-hour trot down the lake and, Bob’s your uncle – a respectable time of 33 hours!” At Du Cane Hut I realised I was suffering a terrible dose of counting chickens before they hatch as I struggled to get back out the door after what was supposed to be a quick delayering session.
When guiding we always encourage guests or students to let
us know when they feel hot spots which may be the early stages of a
blister. Prevention is better than cure
they say! Do you think I heeded my own
advice when I had that classic feeling on both heels and both big toes? Of course not! As I started to seriously question the wisdom
of listing Pine Valley as one of our side trips, a brightly orange-coloured bed
of sphagnum moss broke me out of my funk.
This is a beautiful place and I’m going to enjoy every minute of
it. The proliferation of celery tops
then the open, mossy, cathedral-like Pine Valley environs are a treat. The grassy leads where the boardwalk ambles
beside the meandering Cephissus Creek just before the hut is well worth the
side trip (#12) and I felt a real spring in my step as I trotted back towards
the Overland Track.
Back on the main track, as I
reunited with the drop bag for the final time, do you think I dealt with my
blister pain? No! Did I deal with it at Narcissus, another
four, flat kilometres later? No! Did I feel like my feet were going to die by
the Byron Gap turn-off? Yes! Amazingly, as I finally removed shoes and
socks for the first time in well over 30 hours, the blisters had not
popped! Conveniently there were four
blisters, two big and two small, which exactly matched the compliment of Scholl
patches I was carrying.
Despite the blisters remaining
intact for the remainder of the run, I was in a lot of pain as the lake-side
kilometres dragged on. However, the pain
was not enough to take away from the beauty of the rain forest and the
occasional giant Eucalyptus delegatensis which urged me on. In an amazing feat of mind over matter I even
managed to sprint the final two kilometres, spurred on by a heavy shower that
heralded my approach to Watersmeet, the first and only precipitation of the
whole trip.
…and what did I say to Kylie
within minutes of finishing?
“That was hard. That was really hard!”
…and barely two hours later…
“Let’s do that again!”
https://fastestknowntime.com/fkt/clinton-garratt-overland-track-2025-06-02
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