Mt Frederick

Mt Who? That's the usual reaction I get when I blab on about the fantastic view from the top of this little known mountain. The climb up the mountain would have to be one of the most planned walks I have ever done in the Grampians. The entire aim of the walk was to a) get a photograph looking across Mt Lang, down the length of the Serra Range and b) to photograph the Major Mitchell Plateau looking up the gorges of the First and Second Wannon Creeks. And so, map in hand, I drove down the tourist road, looking up at both sides of the road looking for exactly which peak would give the required views.

From the map it was a toss up between Twin Peak, Triplet Peak and Mt Frederick. Twin Peak was possibly not high enough to get a good view over Triplet Peak. Triplet Peak looked pretty uninviting from the western approach and Mt Frederick was too close to Mt Lang to use the 350mm lens for the shot along the range. Eventually Mt Frederick was chosen for its relationship to the Major Mitchell Plateau.

The next thing was to decide on a suitable route up the mountain. There are no tracks up any of these mountains, although it is impossible to get lost here (the walk is between a road and an impassable line of cliffs). I was assisted by a recent bushfire (actually it was the DCNR boys losing control of some routine burning off, which flared into a major bushfire, scaring the wits out of the people in Halls Gap) All of the undergrowth was still mostly charcoal sticks so I decided to make the most it before the regrowth became to thick. My friend Pete was also looking for something to do that weekend so I conned him into coming.

Navigation was easy, start at the bottom and walk uphill, up uphill. The back of these mountains are continuous slope of around 30 degrees. It was hard walking, with the countless banksia branches getting tangled in our clothes, packs, hair etc.... It wasn't long before we were both completely black. It felt like we were walking for ages, because no matter how far we walked, we could still see the car down below. The tangle of branches drove us mad in places as it was a case of two steps forward, one step back, untangle the branch over and over again.

We eventually reached a smooth rock face and now all we had to contend with was our tiring legs and that unrelenting slope. Four and a half hours after starting out we finally reached the top. And at the top....... was a huge rock cairn. We were obviously not the first up here, but who would want to climb a mountain which is normally covered in such thick bush. But WOW!!!, what a view!!

First thing first, we took photographs of each other at the top and then looked for a campsite. We found a relatively flat area between the rocks that was just big enough for the tent, but there were still the odd occasions when one of us would slide down the length of our sleeping mat to finish up at the bottom of the tent. Sleeping was going to be interesting.

The weather was threatening all of the time but everything seemed to go around us, luckily. The morning brought some dramatic skies and some great photographs. After a breakfast of toasted muffins with Brie we headed back down to the car, trying a more direct route down to avoid some of the thick "undergrowth". It didn't really make much difference, as it was either battling through thick bush or negotiating large boulders with some very deep drops between them. I did get that shot of Mt Lang and even though it wasn't quite what I expected it turned out to be a great one. My next guess is Triplet Peak with an 80mm lens but I might wait for another bushfire first.