Walls of Jerusalem - West Wall  Sat. 20th June 2020

(note that in fact, this walk took a shorter route to the Tiger Lake area due to poor weather)

At short notice, your leader has jumped at the chance to lead a second trip to the Walls of Jerusalem this year, following a successful walk to Tiger Lake in February.
Bear in mind that while we are having some beautiful frosty and sunny days in the early part of winter, your leader will be careful to check the weather forecasts over the days leading to the walk, and especially the day before the walk, and will not take any undue risks, so there may be a much less exciting "plan B" if it is too risky to head into the spectacular beauty of the world-renowned Walls of Jerusalem National Park.
Walk route:
The trip begins with a fairly demanding ascent from the car park (alt. 700 metres) to the plateau (about 500 metres altitude over about 3 km distance), and includes further shorter but steep hauls at Herod's Gate and Damascus Gate (alt. 1380 metres), and up the final ascent to King Solomon's Throne (known in earlier times as Hall's Buttress), the eastern prominence of the West Wall. There are a couple of long, fairly level, stretches in between, but the total walk distance to the top of Solomon's Throne is just over 9 km, so a good level of stamina is needed with a pack containing suitable adverse weather clothing and food. Your walk leader will need to be confident in your experience before allowing you to join this walk. You need to check equipment requirements with Chris.
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.

Make sure you are prepared for wet and cold weather, no matter what the forecast is. 

Meeting Times and Places:

If interested in going on this walk, please phone your walk leader, Chris Langerak on 0409 808 152. With a need to maintain social distancing, car pooling is a little more difficult. Please contact the leader if you need to arrange to pair up with someone for transport. The meeting place is at the Mole Creek toilet block at 8:50 am. If travelling from launceston, you would need to be on the road by 8 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: proceed along the Bass Highway to Deloraine (about 51 km), but do not turn off at the eastern exit into Deloraine. Instead, continue across Meander R. and up hill to the western exit, and to the roundabout at start of Mole Creek Rd. A further 24km will bring you to Mole Creek (sometimes used as a meeting place for our walks - check with leader). Continue west past Mole Creek, on what is now Liena Rd, making sure you turn south at the caravan park 4 km from the town. The road continues west until about 14 km from Mole Creek, it branches south, now called Mersey Forest Road. A little over 6 km south, you will pass turnoffs to Cradle Mountain and Devil's Gullet (Lake Mackenzie) but keep going south, crossing the Mersey at Lake Parangana and passing the turnoffs for Bare Hill and Arm River. Another 17 km should see you cross below the Rowallan Dam. Continue south along the east side of Lake Rowallan, for a little over 5 km, and about 100 metres past the Fish River bridge, you will see the Walls of Jerusalem on the left.  Follow this road for 1 km to reach the car park and the beginning of the Walls of Jerusalem walking track.

Warnings:
  The following codes [from our 2020 walks calendar] apply:
    D    Drive distance requires early departure
    S    Steep incline for at least part of the way
    L    A long days walk in excess of 3 hours each way
    M    Marshy or muddy sections be prepared to walk with wet feet.
    E     Exposed alpine conditions ; can be dangerous in poor weather if not adequately equipped.

Click this link for a more detailed discussion of Preparation, Food and Safety guidelines for Boots N' All walks, and especially preparation for exposed alpine conditions.


Map details & References:

Walls of Jerusalem area: 1:100000 map is Mersey (Tasmap 8114) and 1:25000 maps are Rowallan (Tasmap 4237) and Ada (Tasmap 4436)
Solomon's Throne: (Short ref. 415693)
Zone      Easting     Northing     Latitude       Longitude 
55G       4 41 610   53 69 480  -41.82441  146.29689

Several peakbagger points are in the area of this walk, but short winter days won't allow time to visit them. See list on this page (a previous BNA walk).
Solomon's Throne - 1 point
For full listing of peakbagger points, see the Hobart Walking Club Peakbagger's Guide (2000 revision) which can be downloaded (Excel) from http://tastracks.webs.com/peakbaggers.htm  The same web page contains several other listings of Tasmanian peaks.
For GPX (.gpx) and Google Earth (.kml) versions 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).