The big walk began with a long drive to Cradle.
Like most drives north, it always takes longer than you’d think and that you’d want.
Sometimes I wonder how much easier it is for people who live in the north of the state to access these mountains, but then I remember they need to come south for some others. It probably all works out in the end. Any way you look at it, there’s always a fair bit of driving.
It’s why I like to try big walks to “batch” together as many walks as I can. It gets the driving to walking ratio down to more acceptable limits.
On the day 1 agenda was Beecroft and then Recondite Knob. I started with the easy one.
Mount Beecroft
Beecroft is dead simple to access: just drive to the high point along the road from Cradle turn off. Park. Walk up the Penguin Cradle Trail (PCT), hang a left and walk up to Beecroft. Easy!
The walk started nicely over button grass plains. It’d been dry in the leadup so there weren’t any large sections of mud or anything too antisocial like that.
There’s a fairly steep section as you climb the spur to to the high point, but it’s easy to manage and some really nice rock features to look at as you go.
The final scrable up to the trig is easy. After an hour and a bit, I was at the top.
I had a little bit of lunch and began the walk back. I briefly stopped to chat to someone coming the other way, but I knew I needed to keep going because Beecroft was not the only mountain I had to climb that day.
Next on the agenda was Recondite Knob.
So many more mountains!
Find all the walks from that series here
Recondite Knob
Recondite Knob…. let’s just say if you’re umming and erring if you want to visit this, I wouldn’t say it’s a must see.
It was a fairly long, somewhat hot slog over button grass plains for what seemed like hours.
Actually, it was hours. This is not a quick walk.
But lets rewind a bit.
The walk starts out the back of where the Cradle Mountain Tavern/lodge sits. It starts up a lovely little track though nice forest, before you get to the walker log book.
Not exactly a lot of names in there, and even fewer going to ol’ Recondite.
But with that out of the way, it follows the PCT trail up and over the button grass until you come to a cross roads. I missed this the first time, and blew straight past it for 250 meters before realising my mistake and backtracking.
You then head south, down an old vehicle track before it gets lost in yet more button grass plains. It’s sorta pick your own adventure here as far as I can see.
Eventually you round around the awesomely named “Heap of Rocks (1041m)” and come up a ridge towards Back Peak. I missed that, and rediscovered the vehicle track that basically took me the entire way up to Recondite.
There was a bit of a scrubby section towards the end, but if you stick to the vehicle track you’ll be ok.
Eventually I made it up on the plateau and realised that the peak was only going to be a tiny little… knob.
I assume the person who put the stick up knows it’s this one and not the one just next door!
Well, even if the stick is in the wrong place I visited a few of the other high-ish looking points, just in case.
It’s not really one I’m begging to return to anytime soon - and I’ve read some scary things about Mount Remus to want to avoid visiting that ever!
With Recondite done, one simply turns around and walks back the way I came (mostly)
Day 1 done!
Trip map1
Beecroft timings/info:
- Total time: 2 hours, 23 minutes.
- About 11 km total distance.
- 1:05 out, 1:10 back - must have chatted longer than I thought!
Recondite timings/info:
- Total time: 4 hours, 50 minutes
- About 21km total distance
- 2:20 out, 2:20 back. Roughly.
Elevation
