NE Ridge of Anne - revisited

[Pedro]

After my last debacle on the NE Ridge of Mt Anne, I thought that it was worth going back again. Mendelt and I headed off last Wednesday morning and had a very interesting trip.

We walked out over Mt Eliza in the middle of Thursdays storm. When the wind hit it was almost impossible to walk and we had to crawl over the Eliza boulder field to get to High Camp without being blown away.

If you've got the patience to wait for them to load, here is a few pics from the trip:


On the Scotts Peak Road, loaded up and read to go


The NE Ridge from the plains - we were optimistic that the cloud would lift.


The stream was low and easy to cross dry footed - I've seen a platypus in this stream, but only once.


In the fern glade


The stream in the forest was almost dry - fortunately enough water to refill the bottles for the rest of the climb


Huge Pandani in the forest


6 hours from the car - on the NE Ridge at last


Looking into the giant sinkhole - Anne A Kananda


Anne A Kananda


The Cushion Plant - does anyone know of a bigger one anywhere else?


Arrival on the Pandani Shelf


Pandani - well it is the Pandani Shelf


Pandani Shelf Camp


Pandani and Cushion Plant Garden


Mt Lot and Lot's Wife


Isophysis Tasmanica


Bellendena Montana


Evening over Mount Lot


The next morning on the NE Ridge - no glorious sunrise. We woke early, heard rain and went back to sleep.


Above the Pandani Shelf, heading towards Mt Anne


Closing on the summit pyramid - it was already getting quite windy.


Looking back at the NE Ridge


Weather change closing in from the NW over Fake Pedder


Leaving the NE Ridge


The NE Ridge


A break below the summit tower


No summit today weather change on the way. The wind was getting up and the cloud was coming down.


Deception Ridge and Fake Pedder


Back on the main track and looking up at the standard summit route


Wind on Fake Pedder - this is 11:00am on Thursday morning (22/1/2009) - the wind was brisk, but what was visible on the water was just a hint of what was to come.


11:30 and its parkas on.


Oh bugger - here it comes


With in minutes, there was surf on the small tarns


No visibility and almost impossible to stand


Like a vision of Heaven, High Camp appeared out of the murk. The climb down over the Eliza boulder field had been very challenging - crawling and clinging to rocks to avoid flying away in the wind.


Looking back up at Mt Eliza


Time for hot soup

[flyfisher]

Great set of pics- thanks for sharing.Looks like you had a bit of a tough time up there with the wind.
Gives you something to tell the grandkids in years to come.

FF

[MJD]

Very interesting. How did you find the forest? Good pics.

[Pedro]

Thanks guys - it was a great walk despite the wind and rain. People in the High Camp Hut were laughing about the High Fire Danger warning that was out - the floor of the hut was awash with rain that was blasting in under the door!

I've only ever experienced wind like it in Tasmania once before and that was on Hurricane Heath (Cape Pillar) in 1975! That time it was only for a couple of hundred metres, this time it went on for kilometres - pretty much from the Mt Anne turn off to the High Camp Hut. It appeared to be quite topographically generated - anywhere with a big slope and northern exposure was blasted, while it was quite bearable elsewhere.

MJD, the forest was delightful. Much drier than the last time I was there, so much easier to enjoy the scenery. Of course navigation remains a challenge and its easy to get sick of climbing over (around and under!) fallen trees. I'm guessing that there will be a few more of those after Thursdays effort.

[Nick S]

Great set of photos pedro.
Very interesting to see other viewpoints of Mt Anne. Like to get closer to that sinkhole someday as well.
Doesn't it look exotic with the pyramid shaped summit and pandani all around? Like some Aztec ruins

[ollster]

Nice pics. One of my mates has been talking about going up there, and now I'm convinced.

Is that a Kathmandu Alpaca pack I see? I know a few guys who had those (me included). We collectively nicknamed it "the rack". A truely horrible harness design.

[Pedro]

It is a Kathmandu- I can see that in some of my pics - beyond that I don't know as it wasn't mine. Mendelt hasn't complained about it, so it must suit him. Once you get much over 20 kg, I suspect that they are all torture machines, but if someone out there has a nice little anti-gravity harness, I would love to hear about it. Hmm, that sounds like a new thread to me.

[Mickeymoo]

Great shots Pedro, really is such a nice spot out on pandani shelf.

[phil B]

Hi PEDRO
great pics looks like you had a good trip apart from the wind

had similar conditions on eastern arthurs enroute to fedder a few years ago

I have done the Mt Anne traverse previously and am returning in March for another go

The North East ridge looks very interesting -i wonder if you can help me out with a couple of questions

Just wondering about access - did you access the ridge via High camp and the Mt Anne summit or another route

If you go via this route do you then return via the same route

lastly what time frame do you need from the turn off to shelf camp and is water available on the ridge

any other details would be most welcome Thanks phil B

Hope you can help

[Pedro]

Hi Phil

You should have my PM on this.

On this trip, we dumped our car at the beginning of the NE Ridge track, walked across the plains to the Ridge, around Anne, down to High Camp hut and then down the Eliza ridge. We begged a ride back to our car to avoid the 10 k road walk. We were given a ride by a pom who lives in Queensland and who knew quite well a friend of mine from Keri Keri in NZ - a sailing connection rather than walking. Its a small planet.

[MJD]

Went up with ILUVSWTAS in March. We got to the top of Anne via the NE Ridge and came down the normal route. Great trip and unlike January - no snow. Unfortunately it was very misty the second day when we got to the summit. Still here are a few shots from the first day.

The Anne-A-Kananda sink hole, which is close to where you first get onto the NE Ridge, is huge. So big that it is quite hard to get a photo that captures the sheer size of it.

[MJD]

Pandani shelf is a great spot and I was really looking forward to the views at dawn... but the mist rolled in during the night. The NE Ridge was certainly a good challenge with only about 50m visibility. We didn't have too much trouble, but there were a couple of times when we weren't entirely sure that we were going the right way. But just as you were having some doubts you would find another cairn. We had to do a little bit of pack hauling just before the summit. No views but despite having to put up with a bit of wind on the ridge it was almost dead calm on the summit! Very strange.

Must order some sunshine for the next trip:)

[ILUVSWTAS]

Hahaha Nice MJD!!
I have a couple of shots very similar!! I love that one of me sitting on the edge of the cave, Though I dont think I'll show my wife that one... Looks a bit more dangerous than it actually was!

[MichaelP]

Just done Pandani shelf with a couple others.
It was amazing. Not great weather whilst on Pandani Shelf - but the mist seemed to make it more photographic.
Stayed a few days on P. Shelf.

Then Summited Anne (left late to avoid fog - on summit around 7pm i think) on a windy day but still on top.
Had a horrid nights sleep at shelf camp.

Next day - amazingly calm and sunny - did Mt. Lot then out at Condominium Ck.

dont have time now but i might put some pics up later.

BRILLIANT WALK! =D

[north-north-west]

Marvellous. This has been on my list for a while, but . . . you say you parked at the start of the NE Ridge track. Where is this? And where can I get a map of the route, as none of my maps show a track on that ridge, the only thing they show in that area is the main circuit track.

[eggs]

Beginning on 24th January, we were a party of 5 intending to do the Anne circuit with a side trip to the NE ridge.
However, I will put a few photos up here as it became a NE Ridge show.

A late start got us to High Camp Hut where I tented for the first time in 4 visits there. Weather was very overcast, but no rain.
We had met a few folk retreating as it had battered them at Shelf Camp the night before.
Anne was moody with streaming cloud.

Next morning was ok to Mt Eliza, but thick cloud around us across the plateau.
It fined up a little just as we got near Anne - and another party of walkers made it to the top.

Walkers on top of Anne

We wanted to go to the NE ridge and climb it from that route. Cairns took us very high up the scree on the west side of Anne and we found the pad towards the top but turned back due to incoming weather when very close to the top. I have climbed Anne once many years ago, so it was not as big a disappointment to me as to the others.
We were soon negotiating the steep scree down the edge of the cliffs in intermittent rain and cloud. At one place we did have a small pack haul on the way down, but we saw a line of cairns heading back along the cliff base - and it made us think there was a lower trail across the scree to the NE Ridge, and we had actually been following the cairns that climb directly to the top.

Anne was lost in mist as we looked back from the NE ridge.

Mist covers Anne looking back from the NE ridge.

[eggs]

The NE Ridge was a bit of a shock to me. Not too hard on reflection, but I had expected an open walk without scrub.
Setting up was in cloud and it rained during the night. The shelf has quite a lovely character in the mist - and there was an abundance of flowers out.
We had already decided to wait out the weather once we had setup on the Pandani Shelf, so we got up late after the rain had mostly ceased and explored the various shelf levels next morning.

[eggs]

The afternoon really fined up and evening was lovely.
We went out over the really easy bit of the NE Ridge to the Anne-A-Kananda end.
It was quite nerve racking to get to the edge and look down - what an amazing hole in the earth.
The whole end is jagged limestone with sinkholes and edges everywhere - no wonder it is called "No Mans Land".

Looking over the hole into No Mans Land

View south over Lake Timk and Lots Wife

A close up on Lots Wife

[eggs]

The group had decided after traversing Anne that it would be better for us to find an alternative way out.
So I had used my Blackberry to look over notes on this website and decided we should be able to find the NE Ridge access track and go down it.
On our visit to the cave we had made sure we had picked up the start of this track.
Morning was disappointing - instead of a glorious sunrise on the side of Anne we were in mist and drizzle again. So we packed up and got off early.

It was a very pretty walk down - through luxurious King Billy forest and some large eucalypt stands - an extensive area of horizontal that we wound through without much trouble and the fern glade at the bottom.

The track down near the top

A large King Billy

In a stand of tall King Billy

[eggs]

Amongst Tree Ferns

Of course we still had to get across the tea tree and button grass plains to get back to the road.

Now what?

As we did the next cold front came in - but it was very weak.
And I was a bit surprised to find that the start of the track is where the road meets the north edge of Sandfly Flats - about as far away from Anne as you could get.
There is a small cairn on the road to mark the start - but there is a log book about 50 m in along the track.
I presume this arose because this part of the track used to be the main route to Lake Peddar and Port Davies in the distant past?

At the road, my son started the 10km walk back to the car, but some fellow walkers we had met at High Camp Hut had just completed the main circuit and were very kind to give him a lift for 7 km.
A most wonderful walk in the end - despite generally poor weather. We were happy it was not extreme as is often the case.

[ILUVSWTAS]

Beautiful Eggs! Makes me want to get back up there!!

I believe Parks still monitor the amount of traffic going up that way, thats why the log book is there. There are quite a few "remote area log books" scattered in strange places around the state.......

[stepbystep]

Nice report eggs, did you exit on the 26th?
I was on Mt Bowes that day and Anne did not appear while we were up high, although she did try!
The day seemed to clear later on with Mt Mueller well clear by the time we descended to Mueller Rd.

[eggs]

No - we came out on the Thurs (27th). The afternoon/evening of the 26th was the best weather we had.
It was 2 days short of our allowance, so we spent the next 2 days in Mt Field with very nice weather.

[Taurë-rana]

Thanks eggs, lovely photos and good report. Reading it and looking at this thread again made me sad along with the good memories as I went there with James and Michael Poland in January last year. There is a route round as well as over the top of Anne, but the route over the top at least was a bit hard to follow. We did a bit of pack hauling when we were there.
Pandani Shelf is a most amazing place, and No Mans Land looks fascinating.

[ILUVSWTAS]

It was slightly hard to follow over the top, but from memory it kind of goes where you expect it to. MJD and I had a small section where we had to pass packs up, I found this route harder than the normal way up Anne.

[craigw]

Hey Egss, we were the 'folk retreating down mt anne' you spoke to. Yeah, that night (and next morning and into the early afternoon!!!) was a pretty amazing spectacle. A friend of a friend works in the bureau of meteorlogy , and suggested wind speeds across anne that night would have been well in excess of 100km/hr. The noise of the wind whipping over shelf camp was amazing and the down thrusts shown up in the cloud coming over the top were stunning. Disapppointed we didn't get to do the circuit - no other choice could have been made other than a retreat given the wind speed over the notch. I hear some guy was pulled out of the Arthurs after that night??

Anyway, the brief walk up to shelf camp was fantastic. This south australian will defnitiely be venturing down south again, thanks tassie again.

cheers
c