Mt. Wellington

We woke up to blue skies and a slight chill in the air. We double checked the weather when we got up, and it still looked pretty undesirable at the Hartz Mountains, so we decided to head over to Mt. Wellington and do the Organ Pipes Circuit instead.

The Organ Pipes is a wall of rock that is shaped like organ pipes along Mt. Wellington. Rach got a good picture of them near the start of our walk.

The walk began from “The Springs,” which is a car park with a shelter about 4 kilometers up the road on Mt. Wellington. The first part of the walk, a track called the Lenah Valley Track, was mostly flat. I think it took us around to a different face of the mountain that might be less steep.

Along this first part of the walk, there is a lookout called Sphinx Rock, where you can see some of Hobart from within the trees.

When we set off from The Springs, we were wearing sweatshirts, sunglasses, and sun hats. About a quarter of the way through the Lenah Valley Track, it began to hail. Not quarter sized hail or anything, just the small pellets that bounce off you and don’t get you very wet. As it turned into more of a rain/hail, we put away our sun hats and pulled out our rain jackets.

The flat trail continued until we reached Cabin Junction, which consisted of a single shelter with 5 or 6 different tracks all meeting up in the clearing. By this time the rain/hail had turned into more of a snow/hail. Our next move was to turn up the Hunter’s Track, which is a 400 kilometer climb over 1.8 kilometers of distance covered, so pretty steep.

The difference in weather as we went uphill became apparent quickly. Only a few minutes into Hunter’s Track, it was a full on snowstorm, which continued almost to the end of Hunter’s Track for us. We didn’t expect to see snow today, and though it blocked out the views of the city beneath us, the snow-hiking was a lot of fun in its own right.

There was one clearing for a bit where we could turn around and see Hobart again, but another snowstorm rolled in soon afterwards.

Look at the contrast between the top and bottom halves of this picture. You might think it was a warm summer day from the top. The tops of the trees were pretty snowy during the storm, but when the snow stopped and the wind kept blowing, they were free of their snow very fast.

At the end of Hunter’s Track, there is a shelter called The Chalet. We rested for a minute before setting off on the relatively flat Organ Pipes Track, which is the track where you are supposedly able to get good views of the Organ Pipes up close.

A few minutes into the Organ Pipes Track, the snow redoubled its efforts, and this continued through basically the whole Organ Pipes Track, which was about 45 minutes. We didn’t see much of the Organ Pipes through all the clouds and snow. I couldn’t help but comment that we were in Australia right at the end of summer and we were in a snowstorm, while I’ve heard that back home in Chicago, it’s just at the end of winter and it’s 85 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

Finally, we reached the end of the Organ Pipes Track and made our way back down to the Springs via the Pinnacle Track (it’s called the Pinnacle Track because it connects The Springs to the mountaintop, the Organ Pipes meets it in the middle). As we descended, the storm broke up and the snow turned to rain turned to nothing. We weren’t sure how much of it was because we were descending and how much of it was just random timing, but by the time we returned to the Springs, there was no snow on the ground, though it was pretty wet all around.

The shelter at The Springs had a fire going in the fireplace that evidently someone left behind. At the least the building is made entirely of stone so it can’t really start a fire anywhere. We had lunch in the shelter to warm up a bit before getting back in the car and heading down to Hobart.

In Hobart, we stopped off in Battery Point, which is either a suburb of Hobart of a neighborhood of Hobart, but it’s right by the city center. There is a fun market square called Salamanca Market which supposedly has a great Saturday morning market, but we have to be at the airport too early tomorrow to visit the market. We walked over to Jackman & McRoss Bakery on a recommendation (thanks, Nell) and split an apple cinnamon scroll. It was kind of like challah bread with pieces of apple in it and some cinnamon in the very light dough. Delicious.

We got back to the hostel at about 18:00, cold and weary. We spent the rest of the evening hanging around near warm things (the oven in the kitchen, the space heater or under our blankets in our room) and getting our things together.

We have to be up at about 6:30 tomorrow morning so we can return our car and get to the airport in time for our 9:30 flight out of Hobart to Sydney. We’re going to be staying on Coogee Beach for the next four nights, which is the area where Rach lived when she spent a semester studying abroad at the University of New South Wales. Tomorrow night, we’re going to catch a game of footy in the Olympic Stadium area (hopefully it will actually be footy this time!)