tecais wrote:I too have been following this thread with some interest. Tasman's thorough documentation and pictures are a fascinating glimpse back in time.
Some may be interested to know Bert Salmon climbed the Cougal Twins on August 12, 1931 with Jean Easton, Nora Dimes, Eddie ?, Eric ? and Harry Payne.
Not to hijack the thread, but much later in 1964 we climbed all three pinnacles of Boyd's Butte but never made it to the Cougals. Even then the Butte was a crumbling pile of loose blocks embedded in a dirt matrix so perhaps little has changed.
We didn't use ropes and found the north pinnacle to be the most perilous, involving a scrabble up vertical dirt on the south arete.
Don't remember much about our approach route except we came up the north ridge then descended the west flank to the creek. The descent was was some of the worst bush bashing I have ever done through dense lantana.
Thanks tecals for these great photos
In the third photo, the ridge that the Cream Track follows shows up clearly on the right, with the banana plantation on its north eastern side. We also did a lot of lantana bashing on the way up this ridge in 1974, and I had noted that time up took 5 hours and down only 2 hours!
There might still be evidence of the stone drywall foundations if you can get access one day.
