Mt. Duncan – Sat. 20th August 2016

Mt. Duncan is a prominent peak of the Dial Range that dominates the north-west coast, although further back from the coast than the iconic Gnomon that catches the eye when driving west along the Bass Highway.
Quite close to Penguin, in good weather, it offers expansive views of the northwest coast, as far east as the Tamar and beyond. A relatively short walk, there will be time for coffee in Penguin afterwards for those inclined.
The walk begins from Ironcliffe Rd which follows the north and then west side of the Dial Range past Ferndene. About 6.5 km along Ironcliffe Rd, the Dial carpark is reached. 2WD vehicles should not go further due to the degraded condition of the road, and even SUVs would have difficulty over the last km or so of the road to the Mt. Duncan carpark. If heavier 4WD vehicles are available, we might be able to shuttle walkers to the start of the track, which begins a little over 2 km south of the Dial carpark at altitude 420m, and climbs steeply east for about 600 metres before veering north for a further 200 metres to reach the summit (altitude 680m). There are a couple of circuit options which your leader will decide on depending on how long the initial walk to the summit takes, one continuing east, south and then west to the Duncan carpark (a little under 2 km) and another descending north along the Tall Trees track to altitude 120m at Dial Creek, and then climbing west, back to the Dial carpark, regaining nearly 200 metres. This option would be close to 4 km from summit but would take the walk to a "medium" rating instead of "easy-medium".
For the basic walk to the summit, the gain of altitude from carpark is 260m, but the distance walked will depend on how far cars are able to access and whether either of the circuit options are taken. The walk should take 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. August is still winter, so 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, Graham Alexander, ph. 0407 436 556 to book in. The departure time is 8:30am from Summerhill Baptist Car Park [cnr. Stanley and Peel Sts, Summerhill] due to major conference at our usual meeting place, Door of Hope. 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 2016 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. Duncan: 1:100000 map is Forth (Tasmap 8115) and 1:25000 map for upper area is Riana (TasMap 4043).
Map reference:
Short ref. 190390
Zone      Easting        Northing    Latitude      Longitude
55G      4 19 140     54 39 200   -41.19453   146.03571

Reaching the summit of Mt. Duncan will give you 1 peakbagger point. 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.