BlogRoddus: Mt Cockanye to Mt Wall

Uncle Roddus Tramping diary: Tramp No. 142

Mt Cockanye to Mt Wall - 1st Feburary 2014

With the more settled weather of February comes more opportunities to tramp. A club trip of 11 trampers decided to accompany Uncle Bryce to fill in a section of the Craigieburn Range he had not yet traversed. After meeting two of the group at Springfield, the plan of attack was hatched and we set of for our destination hoping the low clouds sitting on the Torlesse Range would not also be sitting on the Craigieburns. Alas the clag appeared to extend all the way to the West Coast. We parked at the gate on the Broken River ski area access road before heading back down the road to the Dracophyllum track, an easy track to Dracophyllum Flats, where we started up hill.It was then an easy bush bash upto point 1140 where we had a chat with a couple of keas before continuing on to the Mt Cheeseman Ski Area, where we had lunch at the lodge. Things brightened up as we climbed up through the ski area and the sun was breaking through as we reached the tops. A short climb then brought us onto Mt Cockanye, our first destination. The travel along the tops was fairly benign until the final 500m to Mt Wall, Where things got a bit rockier and slowed things down a bit. We eventually made the summit with Uncle Bryce ticking off this section of his achievements. The clouds had well and truly departed now as we enjoyed the views of the surrounding countryside. The route off was to the east and followed a shingle chute that would take us all the way back to the original access road where we had parked the cars. Uncle Bryce assured us it was a very good scree run down, no problem. He Lied. The top section looked ok but as we started down it soon became apparent that this was not as soft as it looked and too many rocks were getting dislodged down hill. It was decide to head down in small groups to the top of the chute and wait out of the way of any falling rocks. Getting into the chute also proved to be quite difficult, again the top of the chute was quite hard underfoot and plenty of rocks were getting dislodged. Once we were all safely in the chute and in the soft stuff, had a scree train plunging down the chute to the bottom, and it wasn't too bad going and Uncle Bryce was forgiven. Got back to the cars in about 7 1/2 hours and about 1000M hight gain and 20km walking.