Some photos of The Eldons, January 2023

[headwerkn]

Seems like the Tassie section of the forum as been rather quiet for a while, so I thought I'd share a few pics from our trip into The Eldons this past summer.

Our original (ambitious) plan was to do a two-week traverse from Lake Burbury right through to Lake St Clair. However getting that much time off work problematic for some of our party and with concerns about water up high on the main range, we instead dropped Eldon Peak from our plans and opted for an in-and-out trip via Pigeon House Hill and Five Duck Tarn over 10 days.

That ultimately proved the wise decision, as the area was extremely dry until it rained halfway through the trip. The only water we found up on the main plateau was deep within a silty yabby hole between Eldon Bluff and Crag that yielded an extra couple of litres that kinda staved off the thirst until we got back to Lake Ewart. Walking in the rain the following day was oddly pleasant. Unfortunately heat and lack of reliable water seems to becoming a constant theme for many summertime trips these days.

On the positive though, the change in plans meant we could sync up with the ever-lovely Rockmonkey and her partner for a trip out to Tramontane and celebrate climbing her final Abel.

As everyone always says, an incredibly beautiful part of the state that kicks your backside at every opportunity.

Enjoy.

Warm morning over Five Duck Tarn.

Camp at Five Duck. Don't expect a lot of flat tent space.

Approach up onto the High Dome ridgeline.

Dry AF conditions up on the High Dome ridgeline

Looking out over Castle Mountain, Eldon Bluff and Lake Ewart. Very happy to see the tarns east of Castle Mountain were bearing water (just).

Warm, clear start to taxing 15-16hr day climbing the 'big two' - Eldon Crag and Eldon Bluff.

Ridgeline north to Dome Hill. About as easy as walking in The Eldons gets. Funky cloud activity over Nereus, Macs etc to the north.

Walking out to Eldon Crag. Much further away than you think ;-)

[headwerkn]

The 'Crag done, now The 'Bluff. That rock pile looks rather hard work from here in the heat of the day.

And even more intimidating from here. In the end, though, we found a good line and actually weren't bouncing off boulders for very long.

Top of Eldon Bluff, looking southish towards its southern extent, the Little Eldons and Lake Burbury.

Eldon Bluff, looking northish towards Dome Hill. The patterns in the terrain are really something else.

Eldon Bluff looking east down to Lake Ewart. Camp looks both close and far from here.

Rounding back along the base of Eldon Bluff, late in the day.

Rain on our 'rest day' out to Dome Hill. Picking through the scrub for the second (technically third) time up the first ridgeline.

Limited views as we reached the broad summit of Dome Hill. Still preferable to yet another day of baking heat though.

[headwerkn]

Castle Mountain was out of the cloud literally until the last 20 mins prior to reaching the summit. We hung around for while but it never cleared.

Castle Mountain from the tarns east. This was quite a nice camp, though room only for two 2pp tents.

Rounding the back of High Dome towards the official high point. Cloudy conditions were more than welcome by this stage of the trip.

View from High Dome across to our final peak for the trip - Tramontane.

Heading out to Tramontane early in heavy mist.

Closing in on Tramontane. Genuinely some of the most wonderful forest walking in Tasmania.

Nose of High Dome's eastmost bluff, as seen through the scrub on the way back from Tramontane.

Heading home, thoroughly exhausted and already planning unrestrained gluttony at The Hungry Wombat hehe.

[north-north-west]

Nice.

Depressing to see the state of the pools up on Eldon Bluff, but. There was heaps of water when we were there. Of course, that was inevitable given the weather during the climb up to Eldon Peak and on the traverse across to the Crag camp ...
I take it you took the low approach to Tramontane, from the Sthh Eldon saddle? I still have to check out that route.

[farefam]

A very nice trip and photos. Remarkably dry on the plateau.

[crollsurf]

So many good photos, but maybe they come easy. Tasmania is epic

Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk

[headwerkn]

Depressing to see the state of the pools up on Eldon Bluff, but.

It was, there wasn't a lick of moisture up there... we were definitely looking by that stage of the afternoon. Very, very warm.

We had no plans to camp up high on the plateau, thankfully, but originally wanted to set up base on the Dome Hill ridgeline to avoid going up and down through the scrub from Lake Ewart multiple times. We ended up just staying at Lake Ewart as we had a less-than-great line coming down off the SE plateau/ridge - and didn't have the energy for another scrubby climb that day - but it would have been for nought anyway as all the shallow pools there were completely dry too.

That said, we had 1.5 days of consistent drizzle literally the day after and that probably filled most of the shallow pools. The South Eldon 'River' was completely dry on the way in, nine days later it was flowing. No issues with the Murchison on the way out to Tramontane... that actually was the coolest, freshest water we'd had in a week.

I think we just had unfortunate timing, with 2-3 very dry weeks leading up to our trip. Like the past two mid-January trips, the weather literally bounced between dry heat and rain on a near-daily basis, just the lead up and the first few days that were consistently hot and dry. Spending a lot of time walking up high on ridgelines obviously exacerbates the issue.

I take it you took the low approach to Tramontane, from the Sthh Eldon saddle? I still have to check out that route.

Yes, basically what's now in the new editions of The Abels. By Eldons standards, it was a doddle. Honestly was the most delightful day out of the whole trip.

So many good photos, but maybe they come easy. Tasmania is epic.

I think I managed around 1300 'keepers' out of maybe 3000 photos. Not difficult finding subjects to shoot out that way

[pazzar]

So that's what Eldon Crag looks like!

[Tortoise]

I can highly recommend the fair weather views from the Crag, Pazz! Long way to go to see the inside of a cloud.

Thanks, HW, for the great photos. It would have been that much tougher with so few water sources. Glad you all made it ok. Another epic trip to add to your collection.