Mount Victoria

Mount Victoria is the 58th highest peak in Tasmania. It stands at 1213m above sea level. There are conflicting naming rights for Mount Victoria. Some say it was named in 1828 by Hellyer, and others say that it was named by Sprent. Mt Saddleback is thought to have been named by James Sprent around 1859. Given that My Victoria is just 6 miles north east of Mt Saddleback, this would be the more logical answer. It is thought that the name comes from Royal origin.

Mount Victoria is surrounded by the Mt Victoria Reserve. In the 1980's this area was nominated to be classified as a national park. The proposal failed. When you begin this walk you will question the reason for denial.

Coordinates

41°33′03″S

147°40′01″E

Mount Victoria can be approached from the northern side. Here you will find Ralph Falls, a car park, toilet and barbeque facilities. This part of the reserve is not well known for the walk to the summit, but rather the beautiful views of the Ringarooma valley.

Our walk began from the southern side of the mountain. The only facilities on this side is a marked car park which can be found approximately 4 kilometres from the Mt Albert, Mathinna Plains Road turnoff.

We had planned this walk earlier in the week with my father and his partner. Up until the day of our walk we had experienced an unusual mild start to our winter. We thought that we would be fine for this walk. However, mother nature had other plans.

Tasmania experienced a significant cold snap the Thursday before. This continued on through Friday and brought with it some rainfall. We were excited at the prospect of seeing some snow on our walk. We had an expected maximum temperature of 1 degree Celsius. When listening to the evening weather report, it was announced that Tasmania would expect snow down to 600 meters. Our biggest concern was, was it going to be a clear day so that we could enjoy the view.

Saturday came and we made sure that we had warm clothes, warm food and an enthusiastic spring in our step. In St Helens, it was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining, in fact it was warm enough to be outside with a t-shirt on. The clouds that brought the evening rain had blown out to sea and we were optimistic about the day ahead of us.

The drive from St Helens took us about 50 minutes, where we met up with my father who had travelled from Launceston, via Ringarooma. The children were so excited to see the icy conditions when we got out of the car. Ice and frost is not something we see that often at our place, and defiantly not like the ice we saw at the Mt Victoria car park.

The time spent playing with the ice was limited, as we did not want to begin the walk with wet, cold children.

Across the road from the car park you will find the start to the walk. We joked about the sign to the entrance of the walk.

We were hoping that the change would be a change for the better and not the worse. What we did not expect was a very wet start to the track. Our children do not have proper hiking boots, and we were so concerned about them getting wet feet, as it would have been to unbearable in these freezing conditions. Luckily, once the track started to climb it became dryer and less stressful for the parents.

Once you are through the thick, low lying start to the track, it opens up in to an amazing forest of green. The others kept walking to keep warm, while I took as many photos as I could. They went on ahead and left me with my youngest daughter to be amazed at all the little treasures we found.

I would have been happy if this was the entire walk. You could spend hours in this section alone. I would even suggest that a single track could be built for those not interested in making it to the summit.

The longer we walked the more the sun began to shine through the trees and would highlight sections of the forest that were truly amazing.

I love this photo that shows how the tree roots have formed a natural staircase through a magnificent part of Tasmania. On our walk back down I said to my wife, this is more beautiful that the first section of the walk through Cradle Mountain. The photos do not do it justice. I wish I was a photographer, so that I could capture the real beauty.

At the top of the forest we came across some small caves and evidence that we were experiencing freezing conditions. As I came in to sight my excited children came running down the hill exclaiming that they had found icicles, real icicles. They must have formed though the night as the rain dripped down the outer walls of the cave and then were frozen in time.

I have a picture of Chester with icicles about 30 cm long which I have not included here. As we climbed up around the caves, the landscape changed dramatically. The track now lead us through some very thick, prickly vegetation. This proved difficult for the children. As the spikey leaves of the bushes were at face height, and there was no way to avoid them. The two youngest managed to hitch a ride of the shoulders of me and my father, while the other two, did what ever they could to save their face and they eyes.

I was surprised at how overgrown the track was.

Amongst it though were, what appeared to be water droplets shimmering in the morning sun. I went to shake the bush and nothing happened. The water droplets had frozen through the night.

This is looking back through the thick track that we had just walked through. Can you see the track? Can you see the kids walking along the track?

It would have been very difficult to find someone if they had gotten lost. In some spots you could not see a meter in front of yourself.

Fortunately the track in this section is reasonably flat, with the odd rock to trip you up and keep your mind on the task at hand. The closer you got to the end of this section of the walk, the rockier it got, and the colder it got. Soon enough the vegetation was replaced by large boulders.

My father is quite an experienced walker and he noticed that the rocks were quite slippery, and quite dangerous to walk on. We decided that we would only only go a little further, stop for lunch and then begin the walk back down. We found puddles in the rocks that had frozen solid, rocks that my 4 year old would normally throw, were immovable by even the strongest adults. The mixture of rain and freezing conditions had meant that everything had a fine covering of ice and had frozen together like concrete.

We stopped for lunch and admired the view from the highest point that we would reach today. We had been defeated by mother nature. BUT, we resolved that we would return in the warmer months to try again. We filled our bellies with warm food and then turned for home. As we trekked back through the thick vegetation, I came to a clearing where I thought it would be a good place to wait for the others to catch up. As I looked back towards the cliffs of Mt Victoria I noticed one patch that looked different to the others. I zoomed in with my camera and noticed that the rain for the night before had caused some cascading falls to appear on the mountain, and these had then frozen solid. It was their glisten that stood out to me.

This is taken from about 1 kilometre away, and no that is not moving water. It looks like it is, but it was stationary.