Lost World

Another belated bush-walking post, sorry – these are from a couple of weeks ago. I did a circuit up on the mountain, and it was late afternoon so the light unfortunately isn’t that great. The first path is so flat and well-maintained it could almost be paved; about 15 minutes along that you get to Sphinx rock, which has a pretty nice lookout from the organ pipes and over the city (first panorama). After that you pass a couple of stone huts, before reaching a third where a number of paths meet: Junction Cabin. I took the Lenah Valley fire trail from there, before getting onto the Old Hobartians' track which climbs up through some nice forest and a few sandstone over-hangs. At the peak of that trail there’s a detour up to Lost World, which was the main objective of this walk. The ascent involves mostly clambering over some pretty big boulders, before you suddenly crest and can see all of the “lost world” at once – it’s a pretty breath-taking sight. Unfortunately as I said the light wasn’t great and the photos really don’t do justice to the scale of the place, but it’s a huge ampitheatre-type area with some imposing cliffs slightly wrapped around a field of enormous boulders. Again, it’s hard to get a feel for the size of things from the pictures, except maybe to note the trees growing up between the rocks! I took a panorama of the city (which didn’t come out to well because of the light), but in the right you can just make out the two TV towers on top of Mount Wellington, to help situate things. The return trip was along the base of the Organ Pipes again, from where I got a reasonable panorama of the city. Great trip, sorry about the quality of the pictures. Speaking of quality: no GPS track this time, because although I was supposedly recording one, the results can only be described as “ass-tacular”. Apparently I was teleporting a lot. (I believe there’s a nice short and easy walk to Lost World that approaches from the other side instead, but where’s the fun in that!)