Scrub on Frankland Range??

[ILUVSWTAS]

Just wondering what the scrub is like up that way. Recently spent a bit of time over the back of PB and found the scrub there quite nasty. Definately the worst ive been in.
Was wondering if it's as bad as that up on the Franklands?? If so it may be coming off my to do list...

I've heard people remark that the Franklands are similar to the Western Arthurs? Is this fairly accurate??

[Fin]

I was there last summer and the scrub is not bad at all really. There are reasonably easy to follow pads through the obvious places in the gullies along the range and open walking (knee deep grass) for the rest. The worst we encountered was a short 15 - 20 minutes getting up onto the open part of Mt Giblin after crossing the creek.

[scrub master]

Recently spent a bit of time over the back of PB and found the scrub there quite nasty

Scrub is always such a subjective thing but I guess it depends on where you exactly mean by "the back of PB". If you are talking about the razorback ridge heading north from the summit or headwaters of the Salisbury heading north from low camp, then certainly there is nothing anywhere near that calibre of scrub on the Franklands. If however you are talking about the standard descent to New River Lagoon then you might want to reconsider the Franklands. As Fin says, the scrub isn't that bad but it for the most part but it can get a bit nasty getting down to Islet lake to camp if you go the wrong way. The other thing to consider is the isolation of the range. The new improved Fake Pedder makes escape very difficult if things go pear-shaped unles you have a boat.

Incidently, the scrub to the north of the PB track - specifically Brewsher Saddle is the benchmark to which I compare all other scrub - even bobs knobs was a walk in the park by comparison. It took us 8 hours of crawling through Scorparia and lots of other scunge to cover just over 1500m !!!!

[ILUVSWTAS]

Wow that makes me feel better! Yeh the section from new river up was easy! it was from low camp to mt wylly that had me bashing about a bit.....
thanks heaps! Franklands is again high on the list!!!

[Fin]

I thought I should just add a note that the two things I found more challenging than the scrub on the Franklands were finding water and navigation. There are very few reliable water sources (except Islet Lake). We were fortunate to get rained on a couple of times which provided some puddles and filled yabby holes. The rain clouds however did require us to be quite careful in places with our navigation as visibility was pretty minimal for quite a while on one day in particular. So more than the scrub, I'd suggest you need to be very comfortable with your navigation, even with a GPS, before going out there.

[ollster]

I was up on Mt Sprent on Sunday.

We went to try and get a look at the lead onto the Wilmots Range. What we got was fairly high winds ripping in from the west, and visibility of about 50m when we got to the skyline due to cloud/mist. the scrub was basically non-existant on that section, at least. Mostly rocky outcrops with grass between them. Scrub around the rocks as usual.

It was pretty wet/muddy up there (for buttongrass hills) so I reckon there would be a bit of water about at the moment. Still, a few weeks of high temps like this week would dry all that up.