Rachel Grindlay

Snow flurries across the road as we drove into the upper mountains boded a cold day. The BOM app said the apparent temperature was -8°C, but forecast to get to a ‘high’ of -3°C. Despite that it was a hardy group that met in Blackheath before consolidating cars and heading out to Carlons Farm. The fire trail walking to start didn’t really warm us up, but the fast open walking up the ridge below Glenraphael Head did.

Things slowed down considerably once we got off the ridge and began traversing round to Dunphys Pass. For once I was at the back and with 7 people in front of me passage seemed fairly straight-forward 😉

Traversing the ledges from Dunphys Pass to the gully varied between getting the full wind or being slightly sheltered. Needless to say the pace increased or slacked off depending on which section we were in!

Ascent up the gully and then along the ridge was pretty nice going. Certainly easier than the full body scrub fight that existed pre-fires. It was some of the most pliable burnt banksia I have had the pleasure of walking through.

Lunch didn’t take long as we were quickly chilled by the wind. The sun was popping in and out from behind the clouds, quite pleasant when it was out, but not nice when it was gone.

My favourite moment of the day was when we started out on Harmils Ledge and Anthony returned saying “I haven’t done this before, but I am not comfortable with going this way”. Which when we checked it out was not surprising as there was a massive drop-off in front of us. Fortunately, rather than the ledge having collapsed we were just on the wrong one. A further scramble down the somewhat precarious creek got us onto the correct ledge – comfort levels up when we found the logbook – and some much more sheltered conditions.

We’d brought a couple of handlines for the descent off the ledge – though the handline wasn’t used. Stemples had been installed (unnecessarily) and a few of us made the descent avoiding them just to prove how unnecessary they were.

From there the party was blown to all sides of the ridge, and the wind made communication difficult. Eventually we reconvened and made our way through the worst scrub of the day; raspberry, lawyer vine, over many fallen trees, back to the open ridge we’d walked up in the morning.

A very enjoyable if chilly day out.