Day 5 – Kia Ora to Bert Nichols (aka Windy Ridge)

Definitely shorts weather by this day, boots had all dried out, no need for gloves and swapping merino wool layers for quick dry hiking shirt. As an aside, I was actually worried out the hot days and the heat, cold weather I’m good with, but hot days are a bit of my nemesis. Nothing worse than having to slap on layers of sunscreen and sweating all day – hence i really try to opt for long sleeve collar shirts and a good hat for sun protection, I have found the lightweight merino tops (say around 170 or 160gsm) are a good compromise for cold and warm days, the ones I have (from IO merino) have collars too which is much better than the open neck ones, I took two of these and also a stock hiking shirt (collar with long sleeve) for the potential of much hotter days, worked pretty good. I would probably only consider taking a singlet as well since sleeping in wool was actually too hot, even in the tent.

Tasmanian walks seem to have some interesting estimates for completion time, they basically state their times are for moderately fit peeps doing the walk without breaks, I thought for Mount Ossa i would have a crack at this see if I was indeed moderately fit and could achieve their published time.

Now, its 2.6km each way from the Pelion gap platform with a 482m ascent, seems pretty reasonable right, they advertise that its a 3-4 hour return trip which gives some clues that its not just a walk in the park, scramble time.

I pretty well fanged it up there as fast as i could and only stopped for a couple of photos, its actually pretty tough in some spots, for me anyway, these were where the gradient is like just going up a long continuous flight of stairs, I found this harder than say the rock scrambling where i think my long legs help 🙂 Gerry’s hot tip for rock scrambling, look for the big flat ones, seven big steps on a large flat rock is much easier than 20 little steps over scree rocks 🙂

After being showed up by the oldies in our room in the cabin who were sleeping on the bunks with no mats I did manage to get up in time to see a bit of the sunrise over Mount Oakleigh and Barn Bluff, which unbeknown to me is actually a pretty iconic spot and shot for the overland track. I suspect the ease at which you can just roll out of bed and onto the helicopter pad contributes to the popularity of the scene.

Afterwards we embarked on the walk from Pelion Hut to Kia Ora with the potential for the Mount Ossa side trip, if time and knees permitted 🙂 The weather was looking pretty good (depending on your perspective) with sun shining and only a few wisps of clouds present. I’m certainly much more of a overcast and cloudy day person but this was a welcome change from the first few days of being pretty wet.

The B-sides from Day 3.

Windemere to Pelion Hut.

The weather did really cooperate, the evening at Pelion hut had clear skies which meant astro shots where on the table 🙂 It can be challenging to stay up late since the hut and most people get to bed pretty early (for good reason), normally I would be out shooting astro for an hour or more, but given the fact I had to sneak back into the hut and also get up early for the next day I restrained myself with only a few astro shots. These were taken on the helicopter landing pad with the noising wombat snuffling and sneezing all over the joint.

The astro shots are taken using the Viltrox 16mm f1.8 lens, quite a versatile lens for this trip, doubled as my wide angle shots in the forest and also for astro stuff whilst not as wide as my 14mm f2.8 samyang (or 14-24mm f2.8 nikkor) nor as fast as say my 20mm 1.4 it certainly does pretty damn good for something that compact and also very cost effective. Its also pretty water resistant too, proof tested :).

Windemere to Pelion Hut, the longest day, the best day.

This day had absolutely fantastic light and scenery that could have kept me here for days 🙂 However I did have to pace myself, 17km and so much scenery and limited battery supplies meant I tried to conserve, however failed miserably, ended up with over 200 shots (culled and edited).

On a side note, I did wonder how the battery situation would go, using a mirrorless camera means the number of shots per charge is pretty limiting, I reckon if I was using my older DSLR (nikon D750) it would have done the whole trip in 2 batteries. I did end up taking a total of 4 camera batteries with the option of doing an emergency charge from from my powerbank (10K). This powerbank had to also keep the garmin inreach and the phone going. I did charge my phone once and the garmin inreach 1.5 times and still had a quarter left on the power bank. I did get into my last camera battery, but it was pretty well full when finishing. I think if I had bigger (photographically speaking) 1st and 2nd days then i could have hit my battery limit.

Lake Will (B-sides)

Lake Will is a super short (40 mins each way) side trip between Waterfall Hut and Lake Windermere, its claim to fame is the very cool little Pencil Pines which are estimated at 400+years old, apparently they can survive up to 1200 years, these ones also had their own personal firefighters in recent years to protect them since any fire damage pretty much kills them.

We did not do the full walk since it was sleeting at times and sideways rain, did I mention my camera was wet again, yep soaked, but hats off to nikon, it has certainly survived and the viltrox 16mm lens which was at the bottom of my little bag also survived even tho getting pretty soaked 🙂

No lake swimming this day.

One of my favourite shots from the trip was taken on this side trail. The image of the lake on the left with a pencil pine on the right and the mist (or more correctly rain) blowing thru.

Overland Track 2026-Day 2 (B-Sides)

Waterfall Hut to Windermere Hut

Fantastic light on this day, but thats probably ’cause it was raining on and off with the occasional bit of sleet and sidewards rain 🙂 The wet trees looked fantastic and reminded me very much of the snow gums in Kosi.

Gerry’s hot tips for the rain, take kitchen rubber gloves to go over your normal gloves, get the ones with long gauntlets and then use a rubber band to lock these over your raincoat sleeves, thus preventing water from running into your sleeve and wetting your inner layer, which when using hiking poles is a problem since your arms are up and down all the time.

What do you call dangerous precipitation? a rain of terror.

or in the case of Tasmania thats just every second day.

A week out the forecast was certainly not looking good for the first couple of days, it was predicted increasing rain on about day 2, as we got closer that rain was pretty much guaranteed on day 1, all 10 to 35mm of it. I can safely say that there was definitely 35mm and more, the good news is tho, I still got the camera out to take a few pictures, I actually think I did rather good given the conditions, the camera did survive even tho it and the bag got completely soaked – mental note for next time, get a decent rain cover for my camera bag, or re-waterproof the existing one since it seemed to really not work…

Here are the highlights from day one.

The B-side images from Day 1