Mt. Montgomery – Sat.
13th June 2015
With winter closing in, the more remote highland peaks are less inviting (but beautiful for those who can get there), so we move much closer to the coast. Mt. Montgomery is the northernmost peak of the Dial Range, and very close to Penguin. In good weather, it offers expansive views of the northwest coast, as far east as the Tamar and beyond. A short walk for a winters day, there will be time for coffee in Penguin afterwards for those inclined.
The walk begins at a side road from Ironcliffe Rd, about 2.5 km south of Penguin and follows Myrtle Creek south for several hundred metres before climbing more steeply to the summit, which is 470m above sea level. An old vehicular trail will be followed south from near the summit, before heading west and again north to rejoin the Myrtle Creek track. Total gain of altitude from car is 326m, and distance is just over 2km each way, with the round trip taking about 3 hours including stops and lunch break.
This walk is rated "easy-medium" and is suitable for walkers, including energetic children, who can cope with steep and rocky tracks. Being winter, 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 leaders, John & Pamela Tabor, ph. 6428 6512 to
book in. The departure time is 8:30am from the Door of Hope Church car park,
Launceston. Suggested meeting place if coming from elsewhere is the big penguin
(statue) in the main street of Penguin at 10 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, through Devonport, past Ulverstone, to Penguin – 130 km
– allow about 90 minutes. Unless you have taken the scenic coastal route from
Ulverstone, the highway will bring you to the hills high above the south of
Penguin, so take the off-ramp for Penguin, and when you reach Main Road, turn
right to drive along the foreshore to the penguin statue. After leaving the
statue, continue east 30 metres or so and turn hard right into Crescent St. and
then left at “The Rock” community church into Ironcliffe
Rd. See details above for further directions.
Warnings:
The following codes [from our 2015 walks calendar] apply:
D Drive distance requires early departure
S Steep incline for at least part of the
way
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:
Mt. Montgomery: 1:100000 map is Forth (Tasmap
8115) and 1:25000 map for upper area is Ulverstone (TasMap
4244).
Map reference:
Short ref. n/a
Zone Easting
Northing Latitude Longitude
55G 4 21 570 54 44 070 -41.15090 146.06531
There are no peakbagger points for the area covered by this walk. 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