Mt Eliza and Mt Anne

Thursday, 10 February 2022

On Australia Day Jon and I along with a group of orienteering friends took advantage of the decent weather forecast and took on the long daywalk to Mt Anne in the south west.  I'm not joking about the longness of it, we left home at 6:15 and returned home not much before 9pm. The almost 2 hour drive each way didn't help, but also the fact that we took quite a few breaks and waits along the way. It didn't matter though, the day was great fun.

This track has only recently re-opened since the fires burnt out the area in 2018/2019.  It's been completely re-built with thousands of steps heading almost all the way up Mt Eliza.

The first 200m or so was easy..

The next 4 km was not..

It was up and up and up until we clambered over the last scree field and emerged on the top of Mt Eliza.  

The cloud was qite low at the time, so the views didn't really open up until later in the afternoon, so after a rest we continued along the Eliza Plateau.

We had to traverse through a few more boulder fields which slowed us down as a group but we eventually got to the base of the last scramble.

It was there that all but one of us decided to call it a day.  It looked pretty difficult, the fog kept coming and going, and someone had fallen just a few weeks ago - I was satisfied that I'd come as close as I wanted to. We chatted to 3 other groups, none of whom had made the very top either.

It was only an hour after we left the base that the cloud cleared enough for us to get a look at what we had missed. We also got a good look at the full Mt Anne circuit route - something I've decided I don't ever need to do!

Back at the top of Mt Eliza we got amazing views all around us this time. We took it all in before descending the last zillion metres back to the cars. All up it was a great day out.