Tas NE Highlands Trail - Wild Mag Track Notes?

[DonQx]

Where could I find a copy of these Wild Magazine Track Notes? ...

The Forbidden Walk: the northeast Highlands Track
Bushwalking track notes, including map, for the Northeast Highlands Track; Ralph Falls; Rattler Range; Maa Mon Chin Lake; Weld River; Poimena; Groom River Valley; Lehners Ridge; Halls Falls
Issue: Issue 112
Page #46-47,49
Writer: Lesley Nicklason

Any help would be appreciatred.

dq.

[doogs]

Can't help with those specific track notes but Nick D wrote an excellent trip report on this walk. If you use the search for North East Highland Trail you should find it

[DonQx]

thanks doogs, have seen that one already.

I'm wondering whether there might be any track sketches out there.

[Son of a Beach]

"Lesley Nicklason" can't be a terribly common name. I bet she'd be easy to track down. After a quick search, I reckon you could find her, or somebody that knows her, at: friendsofthebluetier(at)bigpond(dot)com . Probably in the white pages too.

(Third item on my Google search results was this one: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3767 . Not much there, but it may be of some use.)

[johnw]

Where could I find a copy of these Wild Magazine Track Notes? ...

The Forbidden Walk: the northeast Highlands Track
Bushwalking track notes, including map, for the Northeast Highlands Track; Ralph Falls; Rattler Range; Maa Mon Chin Lake; Weld River; Poimena; Groom River Valley; Lehners Ridge; Halls Falls
Issue: Issue 112
Page #46-47,49
Writer: Lesley Nicklason

Any help would be appreciatred.

dq.

DonQx I remember reading this article, which sparked my interest in the Blue Tier region. I ultimately did a couple of day walks in the area about 3 years ago. I'm pretty sure I still have that edition of the magazine lying around at home. I will have look for it but may take a little while due to the current state of my filing system .

[DonQx]

That would be great!

Thanks johnw

[shazcol]

Where could I find a copy of these Wild Magazine Track Notes? ...

The Forbidden Walk: the northeast Highlands Track
Bushwalking track notes, including map, for the Northeast Highlands Track; Ralph Falls; Rattler Range; Maa Mon Chin Lake; Weld River; Poimena; Groom River Valley; Lehners Ridge; Halls Falls
Issue: Issue 112
Page #46-47,49
Writer: Lesley Nicklason

Any help would be appreciatred.

dq.

The Launceston Library has copies of Wild that you can borrow for a week at a time, could be worth a try. Have search via their online catalogue?

[DonQx]

thanks for the suggestion shazcol, yes I have

the catalog only lists the last 2 years, looks like I might have to go & visit them to look at their archives or whatever it may be called

[DonQx]

ha! ... we're in luck! ... johnw has found the notes and emailed me a scanned copy.

reduced sized images below, should still be good enough for reading I hope, if not let me know.

thanks for that johnw!

dq.

[NickD]

Such a beautiful trail, a real fine peice of work. Hopefully it gets up and running in the future, will hopefully get myself on that trail once again this coming Summer!

[billshep]

Update on the Rattler Range traverse. I have just finished waymarking the missing sections on Lesley Nicklason's wonderful Rattler Range walk from Cash's Gorge to Rattler Hill. Its best done with a car shuttle between Ralph's Falls and Ah Foo Road if you can organise this. To locate the start of the route go down from the viewing platform at Cash's Gorge to the old lookout and head down towards the creek on an open rocky slope, tapes will be seen off to the right on the edge of the bush. The route crosses the creek and heads straight back north up along the edge of the escarpment in open tea tree bush. The best views are had in openings in this bush. You cross two small creeks en route. After about an hour you enter beautiful myrtle forest. There are a few scrubby areas but the route avoids them. Some sections are carpeted in thick sphagnum moss. After about 2 hours you will reach the headwaters of Dobson's Creek in a saddle, a beautiful place. Then the track goes back up on to the tops keeping to the east to avoid bad scrub and descends to the head of the South George River, another pristine spot. Leaving here, again skirting the scrub on the east, there is a section of very big myrtles - the Mother of all Myrtles! - before you arrive at an old 4wd track. The walk follows this for an hour. It is illegally used by trail bikers who make an appalling mess in the Forest Reserve. For the final 20 minutes the route leaves the 4wd track before emerging on an old road below Rattler Hill with tin mine workings. There are nice grassy camping spots in this area, with water from the head of the Cascade River.

Head down the old road until it meets Ah Foo Road, which runs down to the Mt Paris dam road to Weldborough or Branxholm. The top of Ah Foo has fallen pines above the road, take care. Probably best to leave a shuttle vehicle just before this obstacle.

Allow 5-6 hours for the walk. water can usually be found at the creek heads but don't rely on this.

[billshep]

Update on the Rattler Range. Now that the whole range is waymarked, I hope to re route the walk away from the worst bits of 4wd/trailbike damage on the northern section. There is little chance of stopping the bikes but we can keep away from their depradations!

[north-north-west]

Ooooo, lovely. I've been meaning to get back in there eventually.

[bohwaz]

Did the Rattler Range traverse as a two day return walk from Ralph Falls after finding the track by random luck while wandering around and finding the track so beautiful. It was a great experience, it is truly a magnificent walk and we loved it, thank you very much for waymarking it, it is quite easy to follow for someone who never heard about it before.

We got lost a bit on the plateau after climbing back from Dobsons creek as we saw a pink ribbon lower on the slope and followed that line of pink for about 300 meters before realising it was another route going down the range and back in the direction to the creek. Another place where it was confusing was after Elfin Glade when you reach the old vehicle track destroyed by the trail bikes, the pink ribbons continue to the right (and down) but you have to go left (no ribbons) and 150 meters later you reach a newly cleared track to bypass the 4WD bog, after that we had no trouble.

The track is about 12 kilometers long and has ~600 meters of elevation gain and ~600 meters of elevation loss. You don't really see it or feel it while walking as it seems quite flat most of the way, but you feel it in your knees at the end of the day The signposted 6-7 hours from start to end is accurate, took 7 hours on the way in (including lunch and lots of photos in the forest) and 6 hours on the way back. Good camping spots around Cascade river headwaters on the plateau.

Very nice place indeed, I hope I can come back one day to do the complete 7 days walk

I'm attaching the GPS trace (way back) if anyone is interested, please note that it doesn't include the 4WD bog bypass, as we walked through the vehicle track on the way back (it was mostly dry), so that I could map it later.

[Crawfinator]

Hi Bohwaz,

Are you able to give an indication as to the vegetation on this track? i.e. is it closed in with a lot of bush/scrub bashing (better left for a dry sunny day - like leaburra track for example) or is it not too bad?

Cheers!

[bohwaz]

Ah you are so lucky I was just checking out this post again as I am just now going through my photos! (yes I am quite late, that's what happens when you travel for a long time and then you are stuck with thousands of pictures but are now too busy to go through them)

The bush is pretty light, no bush bashing, the forest is surprisingly clear for Tassie, and there is often a thick carpet of moss on the ground (was really fun last summer with it being dry, but if it's wet prepare to have your feet wet), amazing trees, lichens and mushrooms. This forest is probably one of the best in the whole Tasmania!

The only problem there is that you might lose the track, which is not always well defined on the ground. It is very well marked with fluo tape but there was a couple places where we had to backtrack a bit to find the next tape marker. And at one place the track turned left and stayed on the ridge and we went down a slope and spotted some tape but it was another track (hunters track?) but we quickly found that we were going down when the track was supposed to stay on the "ridge" (which is mostly flat btw at this point). So yeah be careful, but with my GPS track you should be able to stay on track, as we didn't get lost without the trace and by just following the instructions from @billshep which were more than enough.

Pictures from my trip in March: http://bohwaz.net/photos/album/2016/03- ... e_Traverse







Enjoy

[Crawfinator]

Cheers, pictures look amazing, going to have to check it out soon! Will report back

[Grindelwalddave]

Will any of the 400000 hectares proposed for release for logging in 2018 (some of which is in the Blue Tier) impact on the NE Highlands Trail?

[billshep1]

I did a few trips over the Rattler traverse this Spring cleared windfalls and tidied waymarking. The only part where you might lose the route is just north of Dobson's Creek where I ran out of tape! It's only sketchy for a couple of hundred mts.
What you must avoid at all costs is the scrub on top between Dobsons and South George river. This is why the route keeps east of the ridge.
The bypasses avoiding the 4wd bogs are clearly marked now - left a few logs to deter bikers.

[bohwaz]

Awesome, thank you so much for your work

[ScotJohn]

My partner and I took on the trail over 48 hours last weekend (July 2020) and had an amazing time discovering these ancient forests. We were so lucky to have extraordinarily still and sunny days and full moon cloudless skies at night. It would be wonderful to see this trail formalised and as a result made more aware to more people, who can see the beauty in this land and be more inclined to look after it. It was a fairly last minute attempt as we were pushed to the NE by unfavourable weather forecasts for the South and West of Tassie over the weekend, but we have history of long arduous challenges through adventure racing, so we were happy to crack on. We followed the guide from the Wild magazine article and this forum's postings. I found a brief report on the bluetier website but nothing else to help guide us. I have to say the guide in the magazine is very frustrating. At times very precise which lulled us into thinking the sections described in vague detail would be very obvious and easy to follow. This was anything but the case. Getting over Rattler Range was straight forward thanks to the work of some on this forum and the extensive taping. It was only a couple of sections that were a little vague but we found our way again after a few minutes. However, after this it became very frustrating.
From the summit of Rattler Hill the description says to descend steeply to the North from the Trig Point. We did this and ended up in thick bush, eventually working our way East to hit a track running N-S which is not marked on the map (but is obvious on aerial photography). There was no taping to be seen and from here we could see no way to "skirt the Western Flank of the Star of Peace" because if you look at the map, the western flank is many kms west of there in the wrong direction. We walked the forest roads to the overnight at the Dam and were looking constantly for a taped "grassy track" coming from our right that would have led us to it, but alas no track was sighted amongst all the brambles bordering the road...

The next morning was easy walking to Weld Hill. Until it wasn't. Again the description of "descend Weld Hill" would lead one to believe you descend from the summit. But could we find a way to the summit. Nope. After trying three tracks that headed towards the main road, we found success with the one South of the summit that heads in a SE direction. It loops back around to the North and there are two pieces of tape along the way for some kind of reassurance, then nothing. We managed to bash through onto the fibre optic cable line clearing and work our way North, finding a faint old 4WD track eventually that took us to the asphalt. This took us about 2 hours and several kilometres of extra frustration faffing around to get there and time was pressing on. From here it was an easy walk down to Harridge Falls, but could we find any sign of a track back along the riverside as described? Nope. After a fruitless search we opted to walk the main road back to Weldborough. From Emu Flats we looked to see if we could find the track coming along the river from that end but alas nothing. Again.

Blue Tier was wet and the water crossings numerous. We normally crawl up here on mountain bikes in an hour and didn't expect to be much faster on foot but time crept on and we were just short of Poimena when we had the most glorious sunset for the second night in a row.

The next instruction "Take the well marked Australia Hill Track from camp to the summit of Australia Hill before descending..." is also wrong. The descent starts from the Summit Mine and NOT from the Australia Hill summit which is nearly a km to the West along the track! So when you walk from Poimena, just follow the sign to "Summit Mine" and you'll come straight to the pink tape marking the descent. However, this descent was similarly frustrating. Soon after passing Puzzle Mine there is tape to the left and the right. Going to the right (West) as per the description, we soon ran out of tape and found ourselves chest deep in scrub going backwards and forwards trying to find more, eventually after nearly 2 hours finding more going straight down the hill (South) and not "veering West". Eventually the track crosses Crystal Creek and then veers South West before hitting the road.

The descent from Crystal Hill to the Groom River was the best marked of the whole route- straight down in 8 minutes. It was marked ok along the river for a short while, then stopped. My GPS track shows we looked a LOT in every direction for more, but again no result, so set upon following a compass bearing and eventually stumbled upon tapes that took us to the furthest NW point of the Cradle Tree walk. Supposedly the marked track was supposed to take us to the Big Tree which is 600m further East...

It was easy downhill walking on Lehner's Ridge Road to Anchor Road and the old road that took us to the Groom River again. Once again - no sign of any track or taping showing the way along the riverside here. There was one small patch of tape 200m back from the river's edge so we struck into the forest here, attempting to "traverse a small forested hill" but the bush was thick, the track non-existent and the time running out, so we bashed our way back to Anchor Road and walked the road to Hall's Falls. At the Falls there was a single piece of pink tape at the end of a track coming out at the weir, so perhaps there is a track along the river after all.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the area on foot and seeing it at a slower pace than the usual flyby we do on a mountain bike. Even though we completed in a few minutes shy of 48 hours, we had plenty of time to see some wonderful nature. Amazing moss and fungi. A tawny frogmouth who sat and watched us from a few metres away without stirring. Three Wedge tailed eagles in one day along with several owls and many possums were highlights.

So my point in posting is to say to anyone else contemplating it - give it a go but ideally speak with someone who has done it recently and can advise where the trail actually goes, with sufficient detail to be able to navigate without losing HOURS due to vague descriptions! We'll go back and complete sections again when we are in the area mountain biking and bring some pink tape help those that follow behind us.

Thanks to the previous posters, without whom we'd have been REALLY struggling!

[tastrax]

I dont suppose you have any GPS traces of this walk so that it can be updated on places like Open Street Map?

[Warin]

I'd be careful with using a GPS trace where the walker has lost the track in parts. You'd only want the parts that are actual tracks in OSM.

In the mean time, those parts that are visible in imagery can be entered into OSM.

[ScotJohn]

I have a few sections of GPS track which could be used for sections where it's clear we were on the right track, if that's of use. I turned it on at times specifically to see where we'd gone afterwards rather than for full route recording. How do I get them to you?

[tastrax]

PM sent

[anna_W]

Hi! I am hoping to do this track at the end of the year. Has anyone done it recently? Would be keen to discuss notes.

[north-north-west]

I've just been looking at the track notes and checking the route on ListMap. It looks mostly straightforward except the confusion of old forestry roads between Rattler Hill and Star of Peace, and the descent from Weld Hill to Harridge Falls and then along the Weld River. The Weldborough to Poimena section is on the old heritage track although there is an option to use the Blue Tier MTB track in winter when closed to bikes (I've done this, and it's a marvellously routed track). The advantage of the MTB track between Weldborough and Poimena is that you avoid the fords on the Wyniford River, which can be deep, fast flowing and very cold.