Lovely weather for ducks...but toxic weather for camping!

Last week I had the pleasure of taking a group of students on a hike in the northwest of Tassie.

It's called Mt Hazelton. It's the green arrow on the map and it seems there's not much around.

The top blue marker on the map (I couldn't figure out how to delete the bottom one) is the closest weather monitoring station at Luncheon Hill.

Mt Hazelton is shrouded in mist above the rolling peaks at the left of this picture. As we walked the weather grew steadily colder, wetter and windier until, in the final saddle before the peak, things looked more like this:

This was before the predicted front was to arrive, bringing with it strong southwesterly gusts and much rain. We were to camp in this saddle, but it faced southwest and would have funneled the wind straight into the tents. So we abandoned the attempt at the peak and dropped back to a more sheltered altitude and terrain.

We had no option but to seek shelter in the lee of a ridgeline. Because of this, there was no open grass and our camp was in the scrub. Tents pitched, we set about getting our tea ready. To give an indication of the tent site, this was the view from my tent door, and yes, that is my coffee hidden at the bottom of the stove...

Between pitching tents at 5 pm and taking them down at 8:30 am, Luncheon Hill had 21.5 mm of rain. At 8:20 pm the wind gusted at 82 km/h. It would have been similar a few kilometres away at our campsite. In total, 28.5 mm of rain fell in the 25 hours we were away from our vehicles.

The following day was much brighter and, apart from a couple of hail showers, was a much more pleasant day for walking.

Mt Hazelton remains elusive. Perhaps next time.