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| Cleft Peak. |
I haven’t done an overnight walk since walking the Desert Discovery Walk back in April. Since then I’ve had a reasonably serious medical operation on my leg which was meant to have stopped me walking for a month, and although I started walking after a couple of weeks I kept it to day walks. Also on the negative side Sam and I went on a cruise the Papua New Guinea which didn’t do a lot for my fat guts. So being even less match fit than normal I decided to head down to the Prom on and easy ramble to reintroduce myself to pack carrying, right. Err, actually I decided to head up to the Cobberas Wilderness Area, bag a few peaks and do a bit of off track rambling, its better to
die on your feet than live on your knees I suppose. There was another couple of reasons I decided on the Cobberas and that is one, that I’ve never been there before and two, I wanted to get a bit of a lay of the land before a planned attempt on the Australian Alps Walking Track next spring.
With the access track to the trail head not due to open up from its winter closure until the Friday before Melbourne Cup Day (a public holiday in Melbourne) I decided that would be as good as any time to head up. Hopefully there would be a bit of residual snow still on the ground and at the very least it should make it easier to find water once I got up on the tops. Leaving home before 4am it was an alpine start for me, after a couple of stops for coffee and a quick breakfast in Bairnsdale I was turning onto Cowombat Track at the still early time of 10am. Now Cowombat Track is the access track to the trail head and as soon as I turned on to it I was confronted by a gate, a locked gate. This wasn’t totally unexpected as Victoria has had an unseasonably wet spring and I half suspected that some of the tracks would be a little later opening this year. So parking the ute on the side of Benambra Limestone Road I said my usual silent prayer that it would remain un-molested until my return and set off on foot.
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| I guess I'll be walking from here. |
Looking at my topo map it didn’t appear that Cowombat Track had any huge ascents in store for me and that’s how it turned out. The extra 4 kilometres or so along the track was a nice easy way to ease myself back into it, the track gently undulating through fairly open forest occasionally giving me a look at the peaks in the Cobberas up to my right. After about a kilometre I met up with the Australian Alps walking Track coming up along Stony Creek, so now I was walking the exact route that I hope to walk next year, for a little while anyway. With Cowombat Trail closed I was interested to see in how bad its condition was, well from what I could tell the trail was in very good nick, with no trees down and no mud holes there were only a couple of puddles that Parks Vic must be concerned about. Having said that though you just need a bit of rain and some hung-ho 4 wheel drivers to cut things up badly, so I suppose they are erring on the side of caution.
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| Cowombat Track made for a very easy start to the walk. |
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| The Australian Alps Walking Track joining Cowombat track, next years big adventure hopefully. |
After around an hours walking I arrived at the car park that signalled the spot that I had intended to start my walk. While having a bit of a break I consulted the map, the degree of difficulty would ramp up a bit soon as I would leave Cowombat Track to start my climb up to the tops. Setting off again I was looking for a spur that ran eastwards just after I crossed Bulley Creek on Cowombat Track. Once I identified the spur it was just a matter of climbing, keeping to the highest ground and pushing through the scrub. Now as far as scrub bashes go this was pretty good, the scrub was fairly light and with the spur fairly broad for the most part it was easy to make upwards progress and avoid the worst of the vegetation.
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| Entering the Cobberas Wilderness Area. |
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| I'd originally planned to start the walk from here. |
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| After crossing Bulley Creek I headed east up an untracked spur. |
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| The lower section of the spur made for fairly good off track walking. |
The spur I was climbing actually would of led me to the top of Moscow Peak but I was heading for a saddle to the south of the peak, so the navigational trick today was to pick the spot to start sideling beneath the peak to get to the saddle. In a lot of countries you can get a bit of a visual fix to help with the navigation but in Australia more often than not the vegetation obscures any view so you need to concentrate on the map and the GPS (if you have one). I generally calibrate the altimeter on my watch at a known altitude and then pick the height with which I need to change direction off the contour lines on my map, this saves me constantly looking at my GPS. So after a couple of hours climbing and with the spur starting to get fairly rocky and rough under foot I got to the spot where I had to leave the crest of the spur and start heading for the saddle.
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| Higher up the spur the ground got a bit rocky which sometimes made it a bit awkward with the overnight pack on. |
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| At around the 1500 metre contour I got into an area of house sized boulders. |
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Now while the scrub had been fairly friendly there is always a sting and in the Cobberas it’s the rough ground, there are a lot of rocks littered over the ground just under the light covering of ground litter which makes for fairly slow going, particularly with a big pack. The traverse under Moscow Peak was particularly rough going (well for an old bloke!) and I spent a fair bit of time climbing and descending my way around house size boulders. While the traverse was a bit rough it was fairly short and before long the ground to my left started to level out and I found myself on the saddle. Now there appeared to be a few options for pitching my tent up here, a small clearing near the crest of the ridge or a large flat grassy area near a spagnum moss swamp. After checking out both spots I decided on the ridge top in the snow gums, the grass bordering the swampy area was very damp and with the amount of frogs that I could hear I suspected it would also be home to a few snakes.
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| The sphagnum moss swamp that is the headwaters of Moscow Creek had been spoiled a bit by the brumbies. |
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| My camp in the saddle south of Moscow Peak. |
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After setting up camp I spent the rest of the afternoon chilling out in this beautiful spot. Water wasn’t an issue here, I just descended a little below the swamp and picked up the headwaters of Moscow Creek, the only real issue was that the brumbies had spoiled the sphagnum moss swamp somewhat so I decided to treat the water just to be safe. Returning to camp after collecting my water I spent a relaxing couple of hours reading in the sun before an early dinner, retreating to the sleeping bag to rest my old bones just as the sun was setting and the night time chill descended.
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| Cleft Peak in the late afternoon sun. |
The Dirt.
I walked 10.8 kilometres and climbed 488 metres on this leg of my trip. I’d rate this as a hard days walking if only because of the off track stuff. Like I mentioned there are a couple of options for camping around the saddle, in the drier months the better option would be the grass near the sphagnum moss but in the wetter months the top of the ridge was the better option, although there is not a lot of room in between the snow gums. I had Telstra coverage at the saddle, but only just, I had to move around a little to get a signal. The other issue to consider up here was the amount of brumby tracks around, while they prove handy sometimes in the off track stuff you need to make sure you don’t camp somewhere that they are likely to come through in the middle of the night.
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