Castle Mountain

13 - 18 Feb 2007

The walk was delayed a few days to give Mike's foot more time to heal from damage that arose on his previous walk. Amazingly the weather forecast was for the continuation of the fine weather we were experiencing for at least a week from the day we finally left.

Crossing the Collingwood river proved easy and in complete contrast to the 2006 trip. In that year the scrub certainly had not receded however and it seemed worse, or maybe it was just the quite warm weather made it feel that way. Anyway it took us longer to get to camp at Rocky Hill this time.

An early start on day two, which was our pattern for all the remaining days in order to get away before the heat of the day built up, saw us getting through the scrub to arrive early afternoon at Five Duck Tarn. This regime of early starts enabled us to get to camp early on all the other days, with the exception of the Castle Mt ascent day, and meant we could sit in the shade during much of the afternoons. The one disadvantage was this gave the March Flies lots of time to annoy us in great numbers.

Castle Mt looked steep as we approached and the appearance wasn't deceiving , plus it was defended by an assortment of scrub, including scoparia. I think we were all feeling weary by the time we got to Lake Ewart to camp. A calm clear morning gave us the morning sun on the face of Eldon Bluff set off by reflections in the mirror smooth Lake Ewart.

The return walk was marked by three days of ever increasing heat and the cool waters of the Collingwood was our only respite at the very end. By the time we reached the car smoke from bushfires was quite close.