Mt Nicholas – not an easy 2 hours

This is day one of our 4 day East Coast camper trip. On a spur of the moment while driving past this compact little peak it looked like a quick walk up and back before lunch. We drove up an old logging track off Mt Nicholas Road till we got stopped by a huge tree with no way around, this was our starting point. Sharon piked out on this one so off I went to gain the ridge line and follow it to the trig. I only had a 1:50,000 scale map so a lot of the detail was missing as I was to find out very soon.

Once through the rubbish bush and rocks and onto the ridge line all was going well until I started to hit impassable drop offs and cliffs. I eventually had to drop off the ridge line to the southern side and walked through some bush till about half way along where I crossed to the northern side through a saddle. Here I picked up two cairns but saw no others. After a while walking under cliff lines on loose rock I came to the trig spot. Problem was it was 55M straight up a sheer cliff face above me.

I started searching around for a way up. Everything was full on rock climber territory till I found a possible gully to try. About half way up I was stopped by an impassable section and had to retreat back down. The next gully (crevice) seemed a slightly better choice and after much careful scrambling and pulling myself up and around I made it to the top. A short walk to the trig with a few good views in some directions but not that fantastic compared to some others. I scouted around for a cairn or track marker for a better way down after a few photos but found nothing but more cliffs.

I retraced to the way I came up and was unsure it was the way as it looked way more dangerous looking down, did I really climb up those ledges! After some anxious moments on the way down and the odd slide on some very loose scree I made it to the bottom. I retraced to the saddle where I crossed and took a different route back. I picked up a taped line but it started to go in the wrong direction so I headed directly down to a logging track and it made my walk back to the car much easier.

What looked so easy was quite difficult in the end. Some scrub gloves would have been very handy and if I had a buddy with me they would have been showered by lots of loose rock falling away. There must be a better established route up here that avoids all this?