Mount Manson - Baldy Hill - 9 November 2014

Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary: Tramp No 147.

Mount Manson - Baldy Hill - 9 November 2014.

Bryce's mission to complete a traverse of the Craigieburn range piecemeal, took another step closet to fulfillment after a successful third attempt at Mount Manson and Baldy hill at the northern end of the range.

  Six keen trampers left the vehicles on the side of highway 73 just south of Ribbonwood Stream on a pleasant warm sunny day. After following a rough four wheel drive track round into Ribbonwood stream, we studied the ridge we were going to attack for a way through the Matagari. This ended up easier than it looked from the flat thanks to plenty of animal trails to get us through mostly unscratched. We made good time up to point 1305 with a rest stop en-route to a slight detour to point 1790 for bagging rights. this point offered great views of the local lakes and surrounding mountains.

  Lunch was had in the saddle between Mount Manson and point 1790 where we were surprisingly sheltered from the strengthening nor-west wind. After a bit of a slog up softish scree and  a bit of rock scrambling, we summited Mount Manson to enjoy the views of the still snow capped peaks of  The Arthurs Park National Park. A bit of our hard work was quickly undone as we then dropped down nearly 200m before another scramble through the rocks back up to point 1828 before the last leg of climbing finally got us to Baldy Hill. The wind was getting quite strong by now as we all lay down behind a snow drift to shelter and rest before we tackled the long scree to the bottom of Baldy Hill, which was another reason Bryce took this route. The scree proved to be a bit of a mixed bag but still got us down the hill in quick time before the slog along the flats back to the cars. All done we traveled a modest 16 odd kilometers and climbed a total of about 1800M in just over 7 hours.