Arm River Track Hike - Day 2

At this point you can either turn left to climb Pelion East, or turn right to climb Mt Ossa.  OR, if you were crazy and didn't realise what an amazing opportunity it was to climb one of Tassie's highest peaks AND get to see the view (the first time I climbed Ossa it was so foggy I wasn't even sure I was at the top), you could simply walk straight through to the next hut.  Most people choose Ossa over Pelion East as it’s the highest mountain in Tassie, but we’ve been lucky enough to be able to do it recently so we turned left.  

As we climbed up the grassy lower slopes we noticed a bank of cloud was heading towards us, and before too long the blue sky was gone and we were completely immersed in it.

We continued onwards through the fog and just as we scrambled up crown of Pelion East we emerged above it so we could see the tips of all the mountains around us.  Ten minutes later all the cloud was gone - so that 30 minute delay in leaving our campsite turned out to be a really good thing! The climb only took us about 45 minutes from Pelion Gap.

 After about 15 minutes admiring the stunning views we headed back down through the sunshine. 

Eventually we steeled ourselves, filled up our water bottles  and headed out into the sunny button grass plains towards the mountain.

The boardwalk here is a new addition and saved us a lot of mud and suffering. At the first river crossing we met our returning friends who had taken six hours for the trip. We continued on hoping that we were setting a faster pace as a six hour trip would have not had us back until 8.30 that night!

After the first few k we left the button grass and started to climb - firstly through mossy shady forest, then a pandanni grove and finally through rather scratchy stunted bushes until we emerged at the top of the ridge a very hot and sweaty hour later.  

There was a delightful breeze along the ridge and it felt like someone had turned the air-conditioning on which was lovely.   After another 500 metres of rock hopping and further climbing we reached the highest point of Mt Oakleigh - including breaks it was about 90 minutes after we started so we would make it back to camp in daylight after all!  It was possible to follow the track further along the ridge so as to gaze down on the dolomite pillars below but none of us had the motivation for that - we were very happy to have a nice break at the top then slowly make our way down again - it had been a big day.