- There are still plenty of mature Snow Gums up here.
Last weekend I decided to head over to the Cobberas Wilderness Area and check it out. It is a spot in Victoria that I've never managed to visit before and the un-tracked peaks had me interested. I'm writing up a full report on my blog http://goinferalonedayatatime.blogspot. ... th-of.html and also doing a journal (if you prefer to read thing in a magazine type format) http://hiking.topicwise.com/doc/Cobberas so I'll keep this short and sweet.
- Moscow Peak from near Cleft Peak, I camped in the saddle below the peak.
I walked the Friday, Saturday, Sunday of the Melbourne Cup Weekend, the theory being that Cowombat Track should be open. It isn't (I missed Xplora's update by a few hours!), so that added a few kilometres to the walk. My route followed Cowombat Track until just after Bulley Creek and then headed up the the untracked spur east towards Moscow Peak. I camped in the saddle to the south of Moscow Peak. The next day I climbed Cleft Peak, Cobberas No 1 and then went over to Moscow Peak. I had rough plans to head over to Cobberas No 2 on Sunday but was woken by thunder and lightening at 4am so abandoned those ideas and headed back down.
- The ridge I followed from Cleft Peak around to Cobberas No 1.
As far as off track walking goes this is all fairly straight forward, the scrub isn't particularly thick but what does make it a little hard is the amount of rocks and boulders littering the ground, there are lots of brumby pads cris-crossing the hills that sometimes help. The brumbies have spoiled the sphagnum moss swamp that forms the head waters of Moscow Creek a bit so I treated the water, but it looks like there will be good water there until well into summer.
- Cleft Peak
The hills were all fairly straight forward as far as navigation went, I met the track coming up from Native Dog Flat a few hundred metres before the summit of Cobberas No 1 which made for a change after all the off track stuff. There is a little easy scrambing involved to get to the summit of Cobberas No 1, the scrambling is a bit harder (more exposed) to get to the summit of Cleft Peak but it was still doable for me in walking boots with a fair margin for safety.
- The Main Range still had a good covering of snow, the Cobberas were snow free though.
I really enjoyed my three days up in the Cobberas, the area doesn't appear to have been burnt in any big fires so there are plenty of mature snowgums around. The walking, climbing and navigation keeps you on your toes and the camping is superb, I didn't meet another person over the whole three days. For what its worth I used Chapmans notes out of his AAWT book along with the Suggan-Buggan Topo Map, but mostly I just made it up as I went along.
- I'm thinking this is a Copperhead, can any one confirm that for me?
