by tastrekker » Fri 30 Jan, 2009 6:18 am
One summer, I was in a group that did all the Pelions. We had notes which suggested a circuit involving traverses of Pelion West, Thetis and Ossa. We decided to do away with the traverses and ended up with the following agenda:
Day 1: Pillinger, Camp: New Pelion
2. Pelion West, Paddys Nut, Camp: Thetis-Ossa sadlle
3. Thetis, Perrins, Achillies, Achillies Heel, Camp: Thetis-Ossa saddle
4: New Pelion, Ossa, Dorris, Pelion East, Camp: New Pelion
5: Oakleigh
As you can see, we did not camp at Leonards Tarn. The camping in the Thetis-Ossa saddle is nicer than Leonards Tarn because you can pitch the tent on fairly smooth grass in the vicinity of some pencil pines on the slope of Thetis. This makes for a long day trip out to PB (the 'other' PB) and Achillies. However, it saves you carrying the pack on a Thetis traverse.
The camping around Leonards Tarn would be lovely but there is no clear grass as such. It is all what I would call coral bush which makes for slightly lumpy camping.
A mistake we made on that trip was traversing Thetis around the northern side as we thought it would be quicker than over the top. It was very quick to traverse the patches of scree but the scrub in between was a tad ugly. Over the top would have been as quick.
Perrins Bluff features a northern peak and it is tempting to get too high on this northern peak, only to then have to descend again. You need to be careful though. There are cliffs on the SE flank of the final summit ridge and if you are too low, you can end up below these. The trick is to contour around first peak aiming to hit the saddle and then follow the ridge crest.
While I have not done the traverse via Pelion West, it looks fairly easy. The ridge is very open and scrub free. If you are into traverses, from the summit of Pelion West, it looks like the walk down the other side would be very similar to the walk up the proper PW track.
The final comment I would make is that I am yet to climb Ossa from the Thetis-Ossa ridge. It looks easy-ish in theory. I have only attempted it in deep snow one winter. We were aiming to skirt the fairly scrub free NW flank of the mountain and aim for the ridgeline east of the NW peak with the obelisk on top. With very limited visibility, we crested the ridge too early and ended up stuck on the obelisk peak in way too much snow. Some of the gaping holes between boulders were starting to freak us out so we piked. I still believe the ascent from this way would be fairly straight forward if you have the visibility or navigational nouse to avoid the obelisk peak.