From the bottom to the top

Sunday, 19 July 2020

For various reasons I've been doing a lot more hikes & runs in the foothills of the Mt Wellington lately so I decided it was high time to go all the way to the top.  I've been avoiding it for the last 50 years due to the excessive amounts of climb (and doing the pure road Point to Pinnacle race would be my worst nightmare).

So on Saturday morning Clare, Paul and I left from Cascade Brewery at about 7:45am. It was freezing cold but Clare kept us moving at a cracking pace up to Junction Cabin so we quickly warmed up.   After a quick snack break we proceeded up to The Chalet where Clare retired from her pace-setting services and headed back down, leaving Paul and I to continue up Pinnacle Road.  After what we'd already completed the gently sloping road felt like it was completely flat, so it was a nice break with spectacular views down to foggy Hobart.

After about a kilometre we took a sharp left onto the Panorama Track to cut off a big bend of the road. I've never been on that track before and it was very nice, curving through the last gasp of snowgums before reaching the exposed top of the Mountain.

After a total of 2 hours of walking and 15 minutes of resting we made it to the top where we had the shelter all to ourselves..

Unlike the blaggards who do the Point to Pinnacle race, we still had to come down the mountain, so we took the Zig-Zag track down the the Springs, then we took the relatively unknown Westringia Track all the way down to Summerleas Road.   This section was really nice - the firmly packed dirt trail was a nice change from all the rocky sections we'd encountered further up the mountain.

Once we reached the bottom we had about 4ks of dirt and paved road to home.  The last bit was along Summerleas Road which was a bit of a drag but we still had enough energy to jog most of it so it didn't take too long.

All up it was 4.5 hours & 23k including 1283 of climb. Nice one us!