Cradle Fagus Appreciation Walk – Sat. 9^th May 2015

It’s time for the annual “Fagus Appreciation Walk” for Boots N’ All on Sat. 9^th May to experience the unique beauty of the “fagus” in the spectacular surrounds of Cradle Mountain. Unfortunately, nature doesn’t always work exactly to schedule, and this year, the fagus was at its peak about 4 weeks ago. Still, the area around Waldheim and Dove Lake is always spectacular, and your leader, Phil Dawson, is leaving the exact route a mystery and will depend to some extent on the weather forecast.
What is Fagus? See http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/?base=3244 for a great description.
This walk is rated "medium" and is suitable for walkers, including children, who have had some experience with tracks of varying quality - part boardwalk, part steep and rocky path, and able to keep going for sustained distances. Because of the exposed alpine conditions, walkers must be fully prepared for poor weather. Please see the warnings below.

Meeting Times and Places:
If you are interested in going on this walk, please phone your walk leader, Phil Dawson, ph. 0417 527 511 to book in. The departure time is 7:00am from the Door of Hope Church car park, Launceston. Suggested meeting places if coming from elsewhere could be Sheffield at Claude Rd. turnoff at 7:50 am or Moina at 8:20 am. The group should arrive at Ronny Creek by approx. 8:45 am.
If you would like to arrange to meet the group at these places or elsewhere, please arrange with the leader, and please be at any meeting place 5 minutes ahead of the listed time.
The leader should always be notified of any other people you intend to bring along, and you should always contact the walk leader if intending to participate in a particular Boots N' All walk.

To access this area from northern Tasmania: Roads to Cradle Mt. are well signposted, and the area can be accessed from several directions. From Sheffield, go south along Claude Rd through Gowrie Park and westward down into the Forth Valley (now Cethana Rd.), continuing up the other side to Moina. Turn south into Cradle Mt. Rd. After approx. 20 km, you will reach the Cradle Mt. turnoff. Turn left (still called Cradle Mt. Rd.) and approx. 4 km south, you will arrive at the Pencil Pine area. At that point, it will be necessary to determine if vehicle access to Ronny Creek, Waldheim or Dove Lake is possible. Sometimes the road is closed due to too many vehicles, in which case it will be necessary to catch a shuttle bus. Otherwise, a further 5 km drive will bring us to Ronny Creek carpark.

Warnings:
The following codes [from our 2015 walks calendar] apply:
    D    Drive distance requires early departure
   M   Marshy or muddy sections – be prepared to walk with wet feet.
    S    Steep incline for at least part of the way
    E     Exposed alpine conditions ; can be dangerous in poor weather if not adequately equipped; see www.sutas.org.au/bush-walking/bush-walking for some guidelines.

If you are unsure of equipment requirements, Visit the Boots N' All section of the sutas.org.au website per link below and read "Clothing suggestions for exposed conditions"

Map details:
Waldheim/Dove Lake/Cradle Mt area: 1:100000 map is Sophia and 1:25000 map is Cradle.
Map reference: n/a
Zone Easting Northing Latitude Longitude
n/a

At this stage, it is unknown whether any peakbagger points will be visited. For listing of peakbagger points, see the Hobart Walking Club Peakbagger's Guide (2000 revision) which can be found and downloaded (as an Excel spreadsheet) from http://tastracks.webs.com/peakbaggers.htm The same web page contains several other listings of Tasmanian peaks.

GPX version of the track: Click here to download. Google Earth version of the track: Click here to download.
Right-click on the file and “save target as” to a location of your choice. (Suggest you click the “Last modified” at top to sort by date to get the most recent at top to find the file for the next walk).

When you have downloaded the track file, double-clicking on the Google Earth (kml) track should open Google Earth and zoom in to the location if you have Google Earth installed on your computer. The .gpx version of the track should import into mapping software or devices that support gpx tracks and waypoints.

GPS Discussions See http://bootsnall.sutas.org.au/GPS_discussions.htm for discussion about the respective merits of hand-held GPS devices and smartphones with GPS built in, as well as information about how to use a Garmin Etrex10 GPS.
File Repository Boots N' All now has its own file repository on the sutas website. See http://bootsnall.sutas.org.au At the moment, this is only a file repository, and not a proper website, but any of the .gpx and .kml files from recent walks can be downloaded from there. These can be found in folders called GPXfiles and GoogleEarth. Eventually, more tracks will be uploaded there, and hopefully some more detailed walks descriptions for possible future walks.

blessings,
Basil Tkaczuk