Forty Lakes Peak walk 15th-16th October 2016- Camping

Yet another change to our 2016 walks program, both in date (a clash with SU Futuremakers and 50th Anniversary Dinner - see you there!) and location (Mersey Forest Road is still closed so no access to Walls of Jerusalem).
As a backpacking and camping hike, this trip has some quite strenuous sections including the steep climb of the Western Creek track to begin with (about 500 metres altitude over about 2 km distance), and a further 150 metres altitude to the summit of Mt. Ironstone, off-track and including some boulder field. Carrying a heavy pack into the wilderness requires a good level of fitness and appropriate equipment. Your walk leader will need to be confident in your experience before allowing you to join this walk.
 
Day 1: Ascend the Central Plateau via the Western Creek track, past Whiteley’s hut and then over the summit of Mt Ironstone  to camp near the southern end of Lake Nameless. Climb to the summit of Forty Lakes Peak.
Day 2: From Lake Nameless to Lady Lake and descent via Higgs track. Car shuttle or walk the 2km back to the vehicles. Day one long,  day two medium.  
As this is a camping trip involving carrying your food and camping gear, you need to check requirements with Peter and discuss sharing of tents etc.
This walk is rated "medium" and is suitable for walkers who have had some experience with steep and rocky tracks as well as off-track alpine walking, 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 interested in going on this walk, please phone your walk leader, Peter Davies on 03 6344 8235 by Wed. 12th October to book in. The departure time is an early 7:00 am from the Door of Hope Church car park, Launceston. Suggested meeting places if coming from elsewhere are at the Deloraine train park at 7:30 am or Dale Brook Rd. turnoff at 7:50 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: From Launceston, proceed along the Bass Highway to Deloraine (about 51 km). Follow the off-ramp into Deloraine and when crossing the bridge, turn right at roundabout to enter the “train park” car park. (If you were not meeting the group there, you would not turn off at the eastern exit into Deloraine. Instead, continue across Meander R. and uphill to the western exit, and to the roundabout at start of Mole Creek Rd.) After leaving the train park, follow the main street uphill through Deloraine to reach the large roundabout. Turn left into Mole Creek Rd. and go about 8 km before turning left into Dairy Plains Rd. Go all the way through Dairy Plains Rd. (several right hand turns and 2 junctions where you need to follow the signs). When you arrive at the T junction with Western Creek Rd, turn right and 800m further on, turn left up Westrope Rd. Go more or less straight for 4 km south, to reach the junction of Dale Brook Rd. which turns off to the right. The start of the Western Creek track is a further 1.5km up Westrope Rd. Westrope Rd. is all gravel, and somewhat degraded in parts, but should be accessible for 2WD vehicles with reasonable clearance (depending on damage from recent rain events).

Warnings:
  The following codes [from our 2016 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 a significant amount of day 1
    L     Long days walk in excess of 3 hours each day
    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 above and read "Clothing suggestions for exposed conditions"

Map details:
Western Creek/Higgs Track area: 1:100000 map is Mersey (Tasmap 8114) and 1:25000 maps for upper area: Lake Mackenzie (TasMap 3338) and Pillans (TasMap 4437).
Map reference:
Short ref. start of walk 563859
Mt. Ironstone alt. 1444m:
Short ref. 564819
Zone      Easting        Northing    Latitude      Longitude
55G    4 56 495 53      82 125     -41.71148  146.47705
Forty Lakes Peak  alt. 1351m:
Short ref. 528798 
Zone      Easting        Northing    Latitude      Longitude
55G    4 56 495 53      82 125     -41.71148  146.47705

There are 3 peakbagger points for the area covered by this walk (Ironstone - 2 pts, Forty Lakes Pk - 1 pt). 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.