Olympus/Byron Gap

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Tasmania specific bushwalking discussion. Please avoid publishing details of access to sensitive areas with no tracks.

Olympus/Byron Gap

Postby bluewombat » Tue 17 Feb, 2009 6:26 pm

Does anyone know if it is possible to traverse off the north western end of Mt Olympus down into Byron gap. I am not looking for detailed information, just an idea if it is possible and the degree of difficulty. I am heading that way next week and am curious about such a detour. If you do know but feel this falls into the sensitive area category please PM me rather than post.
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Re: Olympus/Byron Gap

Postby ollster » Tue 17 Feb, 2009 6:59 pm

Chapman's book marks a route down from Lamont's Lookout straight down to Byron Gap. Dunno whether this is a track, a pad or just a recognised route though.

I was on Olympus on Saturday, and an alternative would be descending down the Western side to Cuvier Valley. The Western side near Olympus certainly didn't look too bad from the top, not sure what it's like closer to Byron.

If you know you have the skill to get up onto Olympus then I reckon you should be OK with the traverse and descent. Just speculation, BTW.
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Re: Olympus/Byron Gap

Postby DaveNoble » Tue 17 Feb, 2009 7:18 pm

Yes it is possible to traverse Olympus and descend to Byron Gap. I have not done it - but friends have. I think there is some scrub and lots of dolerite boulders to deal with - but it didn't sound too bad.

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Re: Olympus/Byron Gap

Postby whiskeylover » Tue 17 Feb, 2009 7:23 pm

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought Byron Gap was the recognised 'easy' route up Mt Olympus due to the waterfall tracks on the Lake St Clair side being generally fairly steep and now too washed out/eroded to be the best way 'up'. From Byron Gap it is a fairly obvious pad, with some 2-3m cliffy/rooty bits which I had trouble with on the 'up' due to short legs and arms, but should be easy on the way down - we never made it all the way up due to having to retreat in a blizzard and camp in Byron gap. I believe there is some boulder hopping which I wasn't keen to do in poor visibility. We originally planned to camp on top and then come down the South Western side to the Southern end of the Cuvier Valley, but ended up having a lovely trip back from Byron via Cuvier Valley - Lake Petrarch is fantastic. Few years ago now, so things may have changed - is there actually a recognised track that has actually had any maintenance done?
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Re: Olympus/Byron Gap

Postby ollster » Tue 17 Feb, 2009 8:20 pm

whiskeylover wrote:due to the waterfall tracks on the Lake St Clair side being generally fairly steep and now too washed out/eroded to be the best way 'up'.


We took the route up from the "Lake St. Clair side" on Sat. We didn't find the existence of a single defined route on the way up or down, and certainly no badly eroded sections. We found the odd pad, but nothing substantial.
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Re: Olympus/Byron Gap

Postby NickD » Wed 18 Feb, 2009 6:54 pm

I do suspect that our line of descent wasn't fantastic, a couple of years ago I descended down off Olympus North to Lake Petrarch, in an almost direct west line.
It was quite scrubby, dense tea tree scrub. Worse than the ascent through the rainforest and sandstone cliffs, which despite having to navigate around some cliffs, was quite okay walking.
The traverse down to the gap is supposed to be used quite frequently with those who do venture to Olympus, so you should be able to pick up a pad through the scrub.
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Re: Olympus/Byron Gap

Postby MJD » Thu 19 Feb, 2009 9:21 pm

It's relatively easy to go up from the Byron Gap. There is a pad/track that starts around the top of the Gap that makes it easy to get through the first bit of scrub. I did the skyline of Olympus last year starting from the Byron Gap, camping at the summit, and coming off the South Eastern side after the southern summit.
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Re: Olympus/Byron Gap Follow Up

Postby bluewombat » Sun 01 Mar, 2009 1:59 pm

Thanks to all that answered this thread, I did get out that way last week and the track from Byron gap up onto the Olympus massif is reasonably straight forwards. We only had time to get up to the top of Lamonts as a days walking was lost due to the 50mm of rain that fell on Monday. The pad up from Byron gap is reasonably easy to follow, the trickiest bit is the first third in the rainforest section, there are a few bits of pink track tape to assist. Two or three very small clifflines to negotiate, with cairns at the top of these for the descent. Then a very pleasant stroll straight uphill to Lamonts. On the way back down a decent sized tiger snake on one of the cliff sections managed to scare the willies out of me, at the pace he moved off it was obvious the feeling was mutual.

We managed to get up Mt Byron the next morning, that is a more trying walk. The initial wander up through the pandani very pleasant but there is no discernable pad. Once out of the pandani there is a significant band of thick alpine scrub including plenty of scoparia. There is a quite good cairned route through this, but if you manage to find the start of it on your ascent you are doing very well indeed. Once through the alpine scrub the route up the boulder field and gully to the summit is obvious and cairned. The views from the top are fabulous. We followed the cairned route back through the scrub which was much more pleasant but still could not find an obvious route back out through the pandani and ended up a good 100 metres from our start point on the track down to Lake Petrach. Overall the route description in the Abels book is quite reasonable but I would have to disagree with its statement that this mountain is a good one for novice bushwalkers, there are enough variables here for things to go pear shaped unless you have a fair bit of walking under your boots
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