by 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
bw
Even a long life is short
HPB