“It now became a serious question whether we should extricate ourselves at all and we determined to start very early tomorrow and have a long day before us.” -Henry Hellyer, 20th November, 1828.
Due to the blizzard, I had made the decision to leg it out of Pencil Pine Bluff on the 21st of November 2022; to abandon the idea of descending into Fury Gorge and to exit along the most efficient route possible. Better to abandon the objective of my trip and to make it out than stick with the objective and not make it out at all.
Barn Bluff during one of the short breaks in the weather. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.
From Pencil Pine bluff, I headed South; summited Mt Inglis without trouble, but started descending on the wrong spur, back towards Granite Tor. I caught my mistake in time and backtracked to the summit. After Inglis, following the Fury-Divide proved tedious with some bands of snow laden scrub that soaked me to the skin.
After a solid five hour march, I had made it to the base of the cliffs high up on Barn Bluff. I was wading through knee deep snowdrifts on the scree slope, the wind howling past me in a roar, knocking me off my feet in places. I had to move as fast as I could to stay warm, despite wearing my full blizzard kit. It was tricky keeping balanced on the snow covered boulders, but I couldn't slow down. I had to keep moving as fast as I could. I felt the mountain challenge my right of passage that day. It was a test I passed, but only barely.
I eventually picked up the SE ridge and started descending. I left the promise of a snowy death behind me with the cliffs of Barn Bluff as they disappeared in the mist. I got to Waterfall Valley in a bit of a state, entered the public hut, found it empty and positively warm. I checked the temperature gauge and saw it read seven degrees Celsius. It was strange to transition from a state of great peril to perfect safety in such a short time.
It snowed steadily all through that night. A number of saturated walkers arrived around 6pm, who had walked in from Ronnie Creek. I thought I would have a reasonably easy day to walk out.
Benson’s Peak from the OT. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.
The next day brought the most tempestuous conditions I have ever seen on the Cradle Plateau. Even on the well formed Overland Track, I was struggling to cover ground among waist deep snow drifts, a howling westerly and a saturating drizzle that soaked me to the skin within half an hour. I met three hikers at Kitchen Hut who had spent the night there and were likely to spend another night before walking out because they were too scared to leave. Later that day there was a helivac from near Windermere further down the OT, where two wilderness guides saved the life of a public walker who had succumbed to hypothermia.
I shuddered to think what would have happened to me had I descended to the Fury River the previous day. Attempting to climb out of the gorge, only to end up having to traverse the exposed Little Plateau in the deep, wet snow would have been nothing short of suicidal. I was content with my decision to abandon the objective of my trip, for the primary objective always trumps all others, and that is to return alive.
On the tenth day of my trip, on the 22nd of November, I reached Cradle Valley around lunch time. I drove back to Hobart via Burnie, as the wind had brought down a telegraph pole across the road at Wilmot. I had made it out in the nick of time. But the call of the abyss had not been subdued.
I knew I would have to do another trip, to visit the Fury River.
Honeymoon Island. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.
To be continued…