Bushwalk Australia

Has anyone camped in the Labyrinth lately in the Pine Valley? I'm thinking about spending a few days at Lake Elysia or Lake Ophion. If anyone has any recommendations , that would be great.
Thanks,
nic

Nic,

It's a beautiful area up there, but it is over 1000m so can get quite cold. I've camped at Ophion once when it had an ice crust over an inch thick on it.

There's quite a few good spots to camp (Elysia is great, Pool of Memories and even further north around lake Helios if the weather is nice), but be careful round the edge of the lakes and preserve this area. I believe parks are trying to discourage camping up there.

Wello

This is a fairly sensitive area for camping so it may be best to keep detailed answers to private messages, as per the forum rules.

Thanks.

wello wrote:There's quite a few good spots to camp (Elysia is great, Pool of Memories and even further north around lake Helios if the weather is nice), but be careful round the edge of the lakes and preserve this area. I believe parks are trying to discourage camping up there.

Wello

I believe you are right re Parks - if you check with the Parks office at Lake St Clair, Pool of memories is a no camping area as they are trying to get it rehabilitated - it's been cut up a bit.
When you go there, you can understand this too.

The whole area is sensitive, and there are no hardened campsites that I am aware of. There's certainly no dunnies up there and because of the frequency of lakes and tarns, as well as the altitude, you'd need to choose your spot pretty carefully.
Perhaps it would be best to discuss your plans with the Parks office and see what they suggest. They've always been good to talk to when you get the right person.

tasadam wrote:The whole area is sensitive, and there are no hardened campsites that I am aware of. There's certainly no dunnies up there and because of the frequency of lakes and tarns, as well as the altitude, you'd need to choose your spot pretty carefully.

Human waste breaks down very slowly in alpine regions, even if buried. Pathogens have been found to survive in buried human waste in alpine regions for periods of up to 18 months and toilet paper and human waste have been shown to break down very very slowly in these regions (research paper).

With the ever increasing numbers of people heading into sensitive alpine areas, it is becoming more and more important to take special measures to care for these environments.

Here is one example from across the ditch.

what about other sections of the track? can you camp anywhere in between the huts? or is that discouraged too?

generally discouraged - the distance between the huts really is not very big. The only place where there is an official campsite is Frog Flats - between Windermere and Pelion as this is by far the biggest distance between the two huts. Another spot where I regularly found people camping is on the little platform on Pelion Creek, just before dropping down to Frog Flats - although this is not an official site either, at least it is on a hardened platform.

There is of course a few other spots where groups have camped every now and then - and you will notice these as you walk past - but parks generally encourage people to use the huts or at least the camping platforms around them. There are really quite a large number of people on the track these days so areas can quickly become a major mess if too many people start trampling around in an area.