Claude Road to Mount Roland, Mount Roland Conservation Area - August 2002

There was a fixed rope of dubious quality in place back in 2002.

Before I even knew what a Blog was I'd already spent years criss crossing Australia, both behind the wheel of various vehicles and on foot. Now with me having no real idea that one day I'd be posting some of these adventures, actually some of these small adventures were actually done before the inter web was actually invented and most were done before I had any comprehension of the on-line possibilities that the inter web would provide. So anyway that's the reason why most of these old retro posts are a little thin when it comes to photos. Not only don't I have a lot of photos but the ones that I do have are were sometimes taken with fairly basic cameras, back then a 3 megapixel camera was pretty sweet! So anyway the reason I post these old trips is purely selfish really, I just like having a record on-line of the places that I've been and things I've done, kind of an on-line diary really, and besides it's always an interesting exercise comparing these old trips to current ones when I revisit these spots.

I'm looking a little flushed.....his photo was actually taken as I finished the walk.

Not only was my hair a little darker in these old photos but I was a little dumber braver as well. It was all about reaching the goal back then, so I wasn't very often deterred by bad weather and I summited quite a few mountains in total white outs, I'm a little more circumspect nowadays and generally will give the summit a miss if the weather looks absolutely crap. Today's walk up Mount Roland was one of those days, I set off from the trail head near the tiny town of Claude Road in crappy weather and things only went down hill from there. 

This steep gully provides access to the plateau.

This climb up Mount Roland is a steep grunt, initially I climbed through eucalyptus forest on a fairly well defined track as I made my way up towards the base of the cliffs that fortify the summit plateau. Once at the base of the cliffs things get a little harder (well at least they did back in 2003), my route jigged right a little and started climbing very steeply up a gully filled with scree. The steep climb was made a little easier back in the day with a fixed rope aiding progress, but still the steepness combined with the wet rocks and the limited visibility meant that it paid to concentrate up here. Eventually my route topped out on the broad plateau that is the top of Mount Roland, with the visibility somewhat limited I paid careful attention to this spot as this was really my only exit off the tops and this wasn't a place that I'd want to get lost. Once up on the plateau I followed a fairly well defined track as it weaved around through the low alpine scrub and rocks, around twenty minutes after I set foot on the plateau the summit trig materialised through the murk. Now normally there is a 360˚ view from the 1233 metre summit and today I to had a 360˚ view from the trig, although my view only extended for three metres! Anyway, after a summit shot I retraced my steps back down to the car park, happy enough that I'd bagged another summit.

The summit plateau of Mount Roland features mostly low alpine scrub.

I'm sure the view off the edge of the plateau is stunning.

There was actually an easy scramble as I made my way to the summit trig.

The Dirt.

I walked around 6.4 kilometres on this walk but that only tells half the story, I climbed around 850 metres with the majority of that in the first 2.5 kilometres. Yes the start of this walk is seriously steep so I guess I'd rate this as a medium grade stroll. The route back in 2003 was fairly well defined but it does cross areas of rock were you may need to follow cairns. As I mentioned above the plateau area is fairly featureless and if you lost the pad up there in bad weather it would make navigation a lot harder, although GPS would make things a little easier nowadays. I've been told that the view from the summit is extensive with Cradle Mountain being in view from the summit on a clear day, I guess I'll have to take their word on that. This walk was written up by Tyrone Thomas back in the day if you can get your hands on a copy of one of his old Tasmanian walks books.

The Mount Roland summit trig.