Mt Donaldson.

On this trip, we check out Mt Donaldson and surrounding area and get surprised by what we find.

So After filling the Zook up with… Oil and a little bit of fuel we were off and straight down the long windy bumpy Western Explorer to Conquer Mt Donaldson.

After a quick Pitstop in Corinna for Jacinta, we started our walk up Mt Donaldson and not far in we came across some fungi and slime mould fruit bodies.

 

 

From here we walked back to Smithton then to Hobart then around the base of Mt Donaldson a couple of times then got close to the summit before going back to the Zook and then we finally made it up to the Summit of Mt Donaldson.  Whoever cut this track in, was on a lot of drugs or very drunk, you seem to walk a very long way to not get far at all but we eventually made it and you could see from snow-covered mountains to the rugged West Coast 

Whilst we where up here two Wedge Tailed Eagles soared within about 30m of us but as usual I had the wrong lens on the timer on the camera set from photographing fungi and all the wrong settings so missed my chance to get a great shot so we just had to settle with the great views.

 

From this point, you could only see a very small section of the Pieman River so we walked down Mt Donaldson a bit to get a better view.

From here we could see the track was only about 100m away to our left and instead of walking back to Smithton and then to Hobart etc we thought we would just cut across but in-between us and the track was a rather steep slope and then the caution soon turned to fun as the button grass was dry so we slid down the side of the hill but not before getting a photo to show the steepness of the hillside.

 

After having our fun coming down we thought we might check out a potential waterfall on the way back from the point where we left the track the creek was only about 200m away but it took about an hour to get to as it was very steep and thick undergrowth the whole way and when we finally reached the creek we where a little disappointed as there wasn’t a waterfall where I expected. 

Although it was a pretty picture perfect little creek not to leave any stone unturned we walked up-stream for a couple of hundred meters to check to make sure it wasn’t there but all we managed to find was fungi.

So from here we turned around and went back to where we had come down to re-access and decided as the day was still young we would go downstream for a bit and see if we could find anything, within 200m we came across this.

Hard to tell from the photo but after this beautiful bit of creek, the water disappears over a ledge.  I went to Investigate and it looked like a 10m drop so I said we have come this far let’s see if we can get to the bottom.  This was a challenge in itself but found nice purple fungi on the way.

 

After climbing up the spur and sliding back down into the creek again we found that the waterfall was quite a bit bigger than first thought so it was a welcome surprise and well worth the effort.  

The waterfall was close to 30 m high in the end so we were quite surprised and happy we made the effort to check it out.  From here we scrambled back onto the track and made our way back to the Zook for the torturous way home along the Western Explorer again.

Hope you enjoyed Mt Donaldson.

Cheers

Tassietravelsblog.

Full Video here.