Point to Pinnacle 2025

On Sunday Michael, Robbie and I walked 21km uphill, in the Point to Pinnacle Race. We are not racers, we just enjoy the annual chance to walk up the cordoned-off road. Last year Rob and I planned to do it together but he was double booked so we gave his ticket to Michael; and this year all three of us did it.

However; this is the only pic you'll see of all three of us as Michael put the foot down after about 5km and did the rest at his natural 21yo pace; getting to the top in 3hrs 31 minutes. He placed 231 of 1186. Last year we stayed together and just squeaked in under four hours.

Here's some of the official photos documenting his casual style; about 9km in and then in the final stretch to the finish.

Robbie and I went at a pace more reasonable for people who can remember the Whitlam dismissal.

In the photo above we (on the right) are just going past the Derwent Scottish Pipe Band (out of sight to the left). They are magnificent, and brought a tear to the eye. Here's a pic from their website.

At The Springs the taiko drummers also gave everyone a lot of energy and positivity.

As we ascended Robbie and I worked through the full agenda we'd prepared; covering recent events, historical events, the best West Indian cricketers, ideal ingredients for sandwiches, prospects for solving perpetual motion, diseases of the horse, Tasmania's greatest opposition leaders, Futurism v Scuola Metafisica and the eternal debate: Cortina v Torana.

There was no view this year. We were in a tight little room of fog for the last 6km or so. It tended to flatten out the walk because although that stretch rises steadily; at any time the stretch you actually could see appeared fairly level. On the other hand it's always nice to see the target and orient yourself as the road winds about; and we couldn't do that.

Michael finished fresh as a daisy, and went off to work mere hours later. 

Robbie had sore hamstrings and a possible blister developing; my left hip had started to creak a bit. But we lunged for the finish line all the same. We finished in 4 hours 19 minutes. Training for 2026 starts now!

Point to Pub/Pinnacle 2024

On Sunday morning Elf walked 10km uphill with her workmates, from Wrest Point Casino to the Ferntree Tavern in the 2024 Point to Pub. Michael and I set off at the same time and walked the same route but kept going to the top of Mt Wellington/kunanyi in the Point to Pinnacle.

Michael is an old hand at walking up the mountain but this was his first P2P. I have just dug through the records to find this was my 4th after going with Elf in 200o and on my own in 2001 and 2009. Michael and I finished in just under four hours (03:56:36 for the record). 

It was mild and a bit muggy, and rain was predicted so I was carrying a raincoat and thermal top. You don't want to be wet on the mountain when the wind gets up, things can turn serious very quickly. It was a warm day but it's 5-8° cooler up there than down in town. Anyway I didn't need them, the weather was pretty much perfect all the way to the top. Elf was a bit too warm down at Ferntree, and when he got back to Wrest Point later it felt like Sydney down there.

The route for everyone starts with a gradual climb into town along Sandy Bay Road, then a left turn at Mr Pizza [it closed in 1987 but lives on in my heart] and then a quite steep stretch up Byron Street which always spreads out the field. Michael and I left Elf and her crew behind here.

At the Aberfeldy Hotel [now The Chowk] you stop climbing and turn left into Davey St. Nearly all Hobart's major city streets start flat and end up in the hills; Davey St becomes Huon Road which once was the highway to the Huon Valley. After a flat stretch we climbed steadily and were going well when we got to the Skyline Servo where the first water station was. We'd decided to rely on water stations rather than carry our own and that worked out well. The Skyline is up the hill above our house pretty much.

Looking at this there aren't many flat bits!

The runners started an hour after us, and the leaders passed us when we'd walked about 8km. 

I find running culture very foreign. I love a quiet morning jog on my own, but I actually recoil from organised serious running. The Point to Pinnacle wouldn't exist without that culture so I do appreciate that it provides this event for walkers, alongside the hardcore "World’s Toughest Road Half Marathon". 

I stopped for a toilet break at The Springs and Michael waited for me. According to the stats we were 657th at 15km, going past the Organ Pipes. By this time some of the runners were jogging back down and yelling encouragement, which was nice.

After we restarted I don't think many people passed us, and we were travelling well. I was often surprised to see a KM marker coming so soon after the last one. Going up past the Chalet and around Big Bend we passed heaps of people and I realised we had a good chance of getting in under four hours. 

At the end we were 521st and 522nd of 1045, i.e. right in the middle of the field. We passed 135 people in the last 6km! Here's us (on the right) trying to make sure we get in under 4 hours.

And here is the king of the mountain casually strolling over the finish line.

Things were pretty well organised at the top. Buses were waiting with our gear and others were ready to take us back down, that seemed to go smoothly at the pinnacle. Not so much down at the pub; where Elf had a long wait for her bus. We all had vouchers for drink and food, and the pub elected to only offer beer – which seems shonky.

But reunited down at the casino we were given a good feed, a choice of drinks and even an ice cream. Then we just had to walk up one more hill to get back to the car. A good day and I'm glad we all did it together(ish).

Lost World walk

Michael was keen to go for a walk on the mountain today. I suggested a short walk so I could keep him company and not take too big a chunk out of my Sunday. The Lost World track looked like a good one on the map - steep but interesting.

We can see the Lost World area from our house. The small peak is Mt Arthur
(I think I have told people in the past that it's Collins Cap but that is quite a bit further away)

I imagined a track of hundreds of steps, in fact there was not one. Instead, think of large boulders, with arrows scratched on them to keep you going in the right direction.

My guide, the nimble-footed Michael, at the top of the descent.

The Big Bend, Pinnacle Road - we parked the car near the white car in the centre.
The first 10 metres of the track was a peat bog, and after that is a dry rock scramble.

We descended for about 20 minutes. The Lost World Track meets the Old Hobartians track down below, but that is closed still since the August storms. I was happy just to get that far and turn around. In fact it was such a steep and laborious descent that a picked a spot with a good view and told Michael I would wait there for him. He went down to explore.

The 'Organ Pipes' on the eastern face of Mt Wellington/kunanyi are huge dolerite columns.
Here further north there are smaller ones – I always think of these as the Little Organ Pipes.

Michael is at the very centre of this pic. You can see where at some stage of geological time
a lot of the columns fell and smashed. They are distinctly hexagonal in section.

The climb back up begins

I am probably haunted a bit by my near-miss when I got lost walking in India. I just did a search of the blog and I realise now I haven't written about it here, except for this tiny snippet. Anyway it has made me uber-cautious about getting lost or injured walking out in the bush. But now I know the lay of the land here, I'll be happy to come back and push on further.

The amazing part was how fast it was to get back up to the top. The process of choosing foot- and hand-holds on the way down is so slow, that it actually is way quicker going up.

August arrives with snow

It must be time for my annual snow pictures.

Snow

These were taken here at our place a week ago. It was pretty crisp.

Blizzard

The boys and I went up the mountain on the spur of the moment to enjoy the fresh snow, mid afternoon yesterday. We had a great time, although the snow was too powdery for snowballs or snowmen. My hands were in agony from the cold when I said OK, that's it - lets quit while we are having fun. (I've learnt from experience you don't wait for the sobbing to start before coming back down).

The car was only 50 metres away, but as we came out into the carpark a genuine blizzard whipped up. The road was caked with ice and incredibly slippery - we had to walk backwards otherwise the wind was etching our faces with tiny ice crystals. I asked Michael to hang onto the wire rope, and just work his way backwards along it. It was actually pretty terrifying. I picked him up and carried him the last 20 metres.

I was so glad I hadn't locked the car so we didn't have to muck about, just dived in. We just hunkered down and experienced the blizzard for a while. The last photo here is us thawing.

Then I put on the hazard lights and drove down the mountain at about 15kmh with my nose pressed to the windscreen.

Clear and frosty morning

Cousins go alpine

Brin and Malachy, my nephews from NSW arrived last night, to much excitement from Marcus and Michael. Their flight was nearly 20 minutes early, which is unheard of. We were killing time driving around the Seven Mile Beach area when they flew overhead, so we turned and hightailed it back to the airport.

Today we had a long and draining game of Swiss Monopoly. I kept throwing threes and fours, getting Free Parking, Chances and Community Chests that said "go back 3 spaces" or "you find 10 euros on the ground". By the time everyone else had hotels I think I had the Swiss equivalent of Trafalgar Square (mortgaged) and a handful of chump change. I came last.

This afternoon we went up to the top of Mt Wellington, where I took the following photos of cousins among the ancient lichen-covered stones.

Motivational plod music

The plan was that at least four of us from work were going to do the Point to Pinnacle together yesterday. Our boss, Steve, had a heart operation earlier in the year. He is now a new man, walking everywhere, a bit like a hobo - a fit, tanned film-making hobo. Some of us underlings were going along on this challenging walk to encourage, needle and if necessary, carry the great man.

In the end no-one but me managed to get their application lodged in time. Was this "plan" just a big con to trick me into struggling up a mountain alone on a Sunday morning? Possibly. Anyway, once I found Marcus's iPod that had been missing for months, I was quite pleased to be doing the walk without company, just a few podcasts to pass the time. No-one to try to keep up with or try not to leave behind.

It all went fairly well. I aimed to get to the top in 3hrs 40mins, and missed that by about 12 minutes. The last 2km were a bit painful. I knew there was a good chance one of my soccer injuries would come to the fore at some stage, and this is when it happened. It's actually a flattish part of the course, so I never felt like I wouldn't finish, but I wasn't able to surge at the end like I'd wanted to.

I got sick of podcasts after a couple of hours. I chose this song to play on repeat (to get me from The Chalet to Big Bend) because it is a real march. After a while I realised the lyrics were quite appropriate, although there was no "ice and snow" this time. I had to can it after about 6 repeats, not because I was sick of it, but because I just couldn't keep up with the beat any longer.



< Click here to buy the track or album on iTunes. Its ace!!!

We were squeezed into buses to take us back down the mountain. I was terrified my legs would cramp and I would have no space to straighten them out, but that didn't happen. I had had to park some way from the start point, and probably the hardest part of the day was dragging myself and all my stuff through the rain, uphill (again) back to the car. Sort of a preview of being really, really old.

Up

This morning I walked (with about 800 others) from Sandy Bay to the top of Mt Wellington, about 21km, all uphill. Its called the Point to Pinnacle. Took me nearly 4 hours. I might have more to say about this when I have regained the use of my legs.

Moonset

The moon setting behind Mt Wellington one morning a few weeks back. As I ate my breakfast the planet spun towards the east, and our only natural satellite appeared to slide behind this mountain to the west. Note: people have been there in rockets.

1250 metres up

The other day I took the boys up to the top of Mt Wellington. We've been for a few walks on the mountain lately, but not right to the pinnacle. It was a hot day and I was feeling sick of sweating every time I moved.

It was beautiful up top. Not much wind, didn't need jumpers. The boys just wanted to set off west across the alpine tundra. I struggled to keep them on a track, or at least on a bit of already-trodden ground.

Some days when I am up there I just want to look over the city and down the river and out to sea. Other days I am more attracted to the view west, over the Wild Heritage Area. I am not a bushwalker's bootlace, so it gives me a thrill to look out over this vast tract of land that would be the end of me, if I was to head off into it alone.

As you near the top of Pinnacle Road, the vegetation gets sparser and lower and tougher. Its a very harsh environment for plants, and my understanding is that small plants with very small leaves or needles, and lichen are the only things that will thrive up there. It's wonderful to get up there on a calm, warm day in summer. There are flowers and insects and animals on show that you would never suspect were possible, on a normal day (normal being sub-zero with a gale blowing straight through you).

We saw a few different kinds of crickets, including these. The one below is in the top left of picture, camouflaged to match the lichen. We saw skinks twice the size of the ones that dart about our garden at home. We saw a strange diamond-shaped fluttering thing, that turned out to be two insects mating on the wing. Impressive.


We climbed a few piles of rocks, culminating in the actual Pinnacle with a trig point on top of it. Michael thought this was beyond excellent. He is very fond of the word "pinnacle" but it comes out differently every time.

On the way down we stopped at the spot where a spring gushes down a rock wall just by the road. I have seen people many times filling bottles here, and I'm sure I have done it myself. I seem to remember it being quite easy. This time I was wet through by the time I had two small bottles of spring water, much to the amusement of my children. Judging by the temperature, the spring was fed by snowmelt. Very refreshing.

Mt Wellington history

From Wiki: Mount Wellington was originally referred to as 'Unghbanyahletta' (or 'Ungyhaletta'), 'Poorawetter' (or ‘Pooranetere’, also 'Pooranetteri'), or 'Kunanyi' to the indigenous people of Tasmania. The Palawa, the surviving descendants of the original indigenous Tasmanians, tend to prefer the latter name. The indigenous population are believed to have arrived in Tasmania approximately 30-40,000 years ago. Their beliefs and traditions, coupled with modern archaeological research, suggest that they may have occupied and utilised the mountain and its surrounding areas for much of the occupation of the island.

Taking Fred for a walk

Fred came over from Melbourne to spend the weekend with us. We did a lot of Boxing-Day-style flopping around and eating, with Imp and Ed and the girls as well. The kids adore Fred, and he takes his role as science guru to the under-9s very seriously.


Yesterday we broke out of the endless rounds of coffee and sandwiches to go for a short walk on the mountain. It has been snowing on and off for a week, but not until yesterday did the clouds part. The road was closed at The Springs, but as often happens, the snow had receded to a long walk up from there.

We contented ourselves with a stroll to Sphinx Rock. The view up to the pinnacle from there is superb, and we can look directly down on our house as well (if you can find the tiny arrow on the picture, that's it)

Sunscreen and snow

It was a beaut morning, and I thought we should go for a walk on Mt Wellington. I recommnded the top of the ZigZag Track, because the views are excellent and its flattish. What I forgot was that it blows a gale up there. Michael was asleep by the time we got up there, so Elf stayed in the car while Marcus and I did a few laps around the pinnacle, in very strong and cold winds.

The peaks in the western distance still wear a thick cone of snow, and the wind felt like it had done a few laps around those icy parts before it blew through us. I had foolishly dressed myself and the boys in just a t-shirt and polar fleece, when perhaps two or three polar fleeces and a parka would have made more sense. Marcus didn't care, he thought the whole wind thing was a hoot. There were blobs of snow around and about, not enough for snowballs, snowmen or snow angels though. Its only about a week since it last snowed I suppose.

At risk of having it blown out of my hands, I took a map of southern Tasmania up to the pinnacle to show him how the shapes on the map matched the shapes down there in the view. I think he thought that was interesting, but we couldn't really hear anything each the other said.

We could see our house from up there too - not exactly it but our immediate neighbourhood at least. I always feel lucky to be among tourists from all over, looking down on this beautiful place, knowing that they must move on while I will come back down and live here for as long as I want to stay, with a wild mountain there waiting for whenever I feel the urge to go up to explore it.

Back home we spent a while in the backyard. It got pretty hot, and I was looking around for shade, of which we have none. I was putting sunscreen on the boys and feeling like this had been a fairly extreme kind of day. No wonder I feel so tired now.

Marcus invented a magnificent water pump in the bath tonight. A funnel, that fit snugly into a plastic cylinder, pumped water out of its spout as he plunged it up and down. Excellent hydraulic sausage that he is.