The next big adventure is only 10 days away! Last week I thought about walking the South Coast Track. I did some planning, some research and some calculating and in the end I made the decision to do it. It’s a 5-8 day walk around the southern coast of Tasmania’s South West National Park. The walk is one of the more popular ones, but around Easter I don’t expect many people there since the season is almost over and weather in Tasmania is starting to become unreliable (has it ever been reliable?).

Unreliability is probably what makes the track interesting for me, besides the magnificent scenery. I could potentially face one week of rain and storm, but if I have only half as much luck as on the Overland Track, it could also be a fantastic week in pure wilderness at the coast.

It’s quite a difference, on the Overland Track you have a well prepared track and huts/shelters everywhere, however on the South Coast Track there are not huts at all, only camp sites. The track can be difficult and extremely muddy, you need to cross several creeks and rivers which sometimes means waiting 1-2 days before the water level is low enough to cross it safely. Or you need to swim. One part needs to be crossed with row boats which is even more difficult when you’re walking solo like I do, but in the end it sounds like a great adventure. Lots of people have walked it before, so I should be fine.

Even more interesting is, the track is located within the Tasmanian wilderness, so there are no streets. You need to book a charter flight which drops you off at Melaleuca, a small isolated spot in the southwest (see the sophisticated map). Once the airplane has left, you’re on your own. No people (except maybe some other bushwalkers that shared the airplane), no shops, no civilization. The fastest way out takes a couple of days. I booked my flight today, for 9 April. I will have an early flight in (weather permitting) and walk the first part as soon as I’m there (maybe I’ll take half an hour to check out the surroundings first).

My itinerary looks like this:

• Day 1: Melaleuca – Point Eric (13km)
• Day 2: Point Eric – Louisa Bay (18km)
• Day 3: Louisa Bay – Ironbounds High Camp (17km)
• Day 4: Ironbounds High Camp – Osmiridium Beach (20km)
• Day 5: Osmiridium Beach – Granite Beach (8km)
• Day 6: Granite Beach – South Cape Rivulet (9km)
• Day 7: South Cape Rivulet – Cockle Creek (11km)

In the end it will be around 95km. Of course this is subject to weather conditions. I plan with 2-3 additional days for bad weather, floods or maybe some days will simply be too long and I decide to stay on a campsite earlier on the track. It’s an optimistic itinerary, especially Ironbounds High Camp will be interesting. It’s a campsite on top of a 900m mountain which is infamous for terrific weather changes, so I will only spend the night there if there’s no sign for storms coming up. Apart from that, let’s see how it goes.

When I did the Overland Track I noticed much of my equipment is not good enough for long walks. It was way too heavy, my backpack was badly set up and caused me pain in my back and shoulders, my clothes were not optimal and in general I simply carried too much stuff. So it was clear to me, if I should attempt to walk the South Coast Track in April, first I would have to face colder conditions (and more unreliable) than on the Overland Track, mostly due to it being autumn in Tasmania now and the coastal winds and rain, and secondly the track conditions will be much worse with lots and lots of mud, no huts, less people around and no boardwalk. So I need to walk as lightweight as possible, and have equipment that suits all possible conditions and incidents.

In the last few days I replaced a lot of my equipment and clothing which cost me a fortune, but in the end it’s worth it (and now I want to go out there and try it of course :-) ). I plan to write a second blog post before I leave where I explain my new gear (I’m really proud of it, it’s very good and professional). For example I bought a new high-performance tent with only 900g weight (compare this to the bulky 2.7kg+ of my current one).

A few problems are still to solve in the next 10 days until departure. First of all it would be useful to carry a PLB (Personal Locator Beacon), which is something like an emergency satellite transmitter. It is very popular in Australia and recommended for bushwalking in remote areas. In case of an emergency the PLB can send a signal that emergency teams can locate within short time. The problem is, PLB’s are pretty expensive, between $500 and $1000. I will try to find a store in Hobart where I can hire one for the walk.

The second problem is, the walk ends in Cockle Creek and the only regular bus service that drives down there stopped the route today (30th March) due to the end of the season. So once I arrive in Cockle Creek I will need to walk another 25km to Dover, where the next bus leaves (at 6.30 in the morning!). Maybe I can hitch a ride with someone. If I make it to Cockle Creek, then it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to get to Dover somehow. We will see.

So I’m sitting here next to my backpack right now and preparations have already started. Lists of equipment are made, food supplies are starting to pile up and in 10 days I will be out in the bush again. But this time it’s serious, the Overland Track was easy compared to this one. Stay tuned.

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By the way: It came to my attention that my blog feed (RSS/XML) stopped working a few weeks ago. Kudos to Sven (who has too much spare time since he finished his studies last week – congratulations again!) I found out that in one of my last posts I had used a Euro sign, the sign of the European currency. I don’t know exactly what happened, but either my Mac encoded the sign wrong or maybe I copy/pasted the character from a different source (since my Mac has an American keyboard without Euro sign).

Anyway, the consequence was that my blog feed became invalid because of an invalid character. While it worked perfectly on my Mac (that’s why I didn’t notice it), apparently on cheap Windows and Linux systems the feed stopped working and reported errors. This is fixed now and should work again.

While fixing the feed I used the opportunity and finally migrated my blog feed to Feedburner, something I had wanted to do for quite a while now (happy now Frank? :-) ). Your existing feed subscriptions should still work, however you’re invited to jump onto the new feed address here for additional features. You can also subscribe to a comments feed if you like.