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General Climbing Discussion

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port davey track(tas)

cparsons

14-Dec-2005
12:17:02 PM

Cant seem to find much info on it,plenty on the south coast track.Any relevant imput would be appreciated,especially on the water crossing to maleleuca,camp sites etc.

kuu

14-Dec-2005
12:32:41 PM

On 14/12/2005 cparsons wrote:
>Cant seem to find much info on it,plenty on the south coast track.Any relevant
>imput would be appreciated,especially on the water crossing to maleleuca,camp
>sites etc.

" At Scotts Peak the Port Davey Track starts adjacent to the Huon Campground and at Melaleuca it starts from the northern end of the airstrip. About 200 people walk the track each year. Most people take about 4 to 5 days to complete the walk and can either fly out at Melaleuca or continue along the South Coast Track to c--kle Creek, a further 5 days walk. The Port Davey Track has some steep and muddy sections. "

The above quote taken from:
http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/recreation/tracknotes/scoast.html

If you hunt down through the item you'll find a little more about the boat crossing at The Narrows and advice about which rivers NOT to cross when in flood.

JamesMc

14-Dec-2005
6:10:30 PM

I walked the PDT a few years ago from Scotts Peak as far as Ila Bay and back but did not cross over Bathurst Narrows. Also did quite a few side trips up the surrounding peaks. The PDT is not very popular, and the Parks & Wildlife Service don't promote it, so you won't find much info on the web. John Chapman's track notes are perfectly adequate.

Photos on my web site at http://www.jamesmcintosh.id.au

I went expecting it to be a less than interesting walk, and just a way to access the surrounding peaks. The track provided a much better walk than I expected.

There was a fair bit of mud north of Moraine A, where I believe the track has deliberately been allowed to deteriorate to discourage visitors to the Western Arthurs. Then there was a bit of mud near Crossing River, and also on the Crossing / Spring divide. Apart from this, the track was almost completely dry, which is amazing for SW Tas. In fact we suffered from sore feet because the track surface was so hard.

The camp sites are small, once you get past Crossing River; we had to squeeze to pitch 4 tents at some of them.

Crossing River would be dangerous to cross if it's high, Spring River has a log, but that could be under water during flood.

Mt Rugby is a popular side trip. It is a big mountain, and the upper section has huge conglomerate boulders you have to climb through, with deep holes between them. I found this more scary than climbing Federation Pk. Take care to follow the poorly cairned route here.

Other side trips we did were up Mt Robinson (good views, 5 hours return from track), Mt Berry (fantastic views, 10 hours return from Spring River), Mt King & Mt Legge (remote, 12 hours return from Spring River). It would also be good to walk up Davey Sugarloaf & visit the Davey Gorge.

All in all a great walk. let me know if you want more info.

James Mc

PS don't forget your umbrella.

tufa_humpa

14-Dec-2005
8:02:52 PM

hi cparsons

A group of 6 of us walked the sth coast to melaleuca and then up the PDT to Scott's Peak about 7 years ago. Unforgettable. The PDT is very underrated, the solitude even with the 5 of us that made it that far was still remarkable. On the PDT we only saw 1 other person, a tiger walker that passed us going the other way without even nodding hello.

gotta agree with pretty much all of JamesMc's description.
We did a side trip up Mt Hesperus (i think it was called) at the west end of the arthurs where we met a 60 yo Norweigian with no toes (lost them mountaineering in Peru), somehow he still descended much faster than any of us. That side trip capped off a beautiful walk that in its own way rivalled the sth coast track.

We did the Bathurst harbour water crossing, with 5 of us and 5 bloody heavy big packs, and that in itself is a story. There was a boat on each side, like on the sth coast track crossing. But with so many of us and tiredness impinging on our logic we stacked the boat with 2 packs and 3 people one way on the first crossing. After doing the first boat swap, I lost the paper scissors rock game and was the loser that had to swim behind the boat whilst the other 2 rowed with the 3 remaining packs. Despite the cold it was going well till a tour group speed boat came from nowhere and yelled at me that they'd seen some sharks not far up the harbour. I swam faster....

You may want to plan the crossing a bit better than we did.

Also would be worth having a look into the sth west coast track outta Melaleuca. We did a 1 day side trip to the first beach along that route from Mel and it looked beautiful, and there were muscles on the rocks off-shore that i can't recall but we might have illegally sampled a few on our bland as pasta dinner that night.

Let us know if you head there would be great to here about your adventures

TufaH

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