Day 4 – Brookes Track to past Fourways

---

I wake before the dawn and listen to the sounds on the night-bush. There’s a bird I don’t recognise, and something moving around at ground level making a cry like a pencilcase zipper being opened and closed rapidly. It’s a low of 10° overnight.

I remember to do my stretches, then start up the spur through close-packed tea tree garlanded every few metres with fresh spiderweb. It’s 750vm to the saddle above the tarn. Roughly Mount Tennent with a full pack.

Approaching Paddy’s Lake, the views rise behind me and Black Bluff looms in front. The tarn is ringed by stunted trees and shrubs. There are lots that I don’t recognise. I think one is pencil pine. The name of the other is on the tip of my tongue. Cinnamon pine?

Apparently there are giant mountain shrimp in the tarn, a living fossil from 250MYA. I hear a splash but decide it’s safer not to investigate. I’ve seen how that movie goes.

I tarry too long on top. I’ve still got 20km and 700m of climb to do. But I have a blog to update, and the view is amazing. Cradle Mountain is insane. Did I say I was planning to climb that bloody thing? It looks like the hull of a capsized aircraft carrier!

I see that I’ve got new subscribers, and that John has linked this blog in the CBC leaders’ newsletter (which I dutifully downloaded for later perusal). I’d like to offer a minor correction to his text; I don’t have “about 50 days left to go”. Just 36.

Fuck, that sounds like a lot.

I do read everybody’s comments, and I’m very glad to get them, but I don’t have time to respond to them all while cold wind rips over me.

Back down at the saddle, I refill my pack from the dry-bag of heavy shit I left there while doing the summit. It was nice feeling light on my feet for a while.

The alpine ridge opens up and the next few hours’ walking are done looking out at Cradle Mountain and Barn Bluff. There’s some mud up here, and the track is a little rough, but it goes quickly enough. It’s all stunted scrub and lizards and wombat poo.

I stop near Duff Ck and have an Aldi waffle for lunch, no worse for the travel.

FOOT PICS SUBSCRIPTION TIER UPGRADE REGISTERED. THANKS!

The wind whips across the exposed high ground. I’m just glad it’s not cold or raining.

Cradle mountain is just 23km away as the crow flies. A little more as the hiker trudges.

The trail along the ridgeline goes on and on, twisty and ankle-rolling. If Siseman or Chapman had disparaging words to say about the Rolling Grounds, they clearly wrote them before coming along here. Great views though.

Bear mountain!!! Well I don’t think we should hang around here too long!

On, and on, and on across these unending hills. I mean, they’re lovely and all, but one does long for respite.

The long traverse of the riddling gives me time to reflect on the larger traverse. What sort of idiot would try to pull a stunt like this? You’d have to be stark raving bananas. The section south of the Overland is weighing on my mind.

Now that I’m here, and with a generous 36 days remaining to me, I’m realising that I don’t have to stick exactly to the plan. Some flexibility may well be required if I’m to make it to Cockle Creek (and that really is the only stipulation I’ve set for myself: to get there entirely on foot). Maybe I could skirt Lake King William by the logging trails to the east and walk into Rhona from there, saving myself a heavy scrub bash and giving myself a bit more time to explore the South West?

I stop at Prospect Mtn to upload blog plots and check my progress. It’s still 10km, 400+ 700 down to get to camp at four ways, and it’s 3:40pm

I can’t believe they carried those rocks all the way up here!

After crossing the road, the track becomes somewhat easier underfoot and less rugged.

Mount Beecroft; optional side trip and big fucking nope.

It’s important to occasionally look up from the trudging and appreciate the beauty.

I reach Fourways and yet another Bec is camped there. I swear, every second woman in Tassie is named Bec. That makes the fourth person I’ve met with a pack on the PCT, and the third doing the whole thing. More than I’d expected, but hardly a highway. Fourways doesn’t have any good hammock spots, so I walk an extra km to a nice beech forest.

Fourways has two excellent waterfalls, but one I didn’t visit and the other I forgot to photograph.

Coming down the hill I decided that a ten hour walk to Reynolds falls and back tomorrow is not going to happen. I shoot off a message on my Garmin and have Shelle book me an extra night at the campground at Cradle Mountain. I’ll have a short day tomorrow, then a full day of rest before the overland. I recall seeing something called “Devils at Cradle” which might be worth checking out, and there are a few strolls around the place that can be done. I can comb through my pack for extra weight to jettison.

Ten thousand years later, I reach camp.

Some days are good. Some days are big. And some are fucking heroic. I’ve walked longer days, and days with more elevation, but never on such challenging terrain.

The hunger has arrived. I raid my bag for snacks that I don’t need now that I’m skipping Reynolds.

As the sun sets, not long after making camp and joyfully easing myself into bed, the creature with a call like a zipper (short rise, short fall) returns. It might be a bird.