Well that’s another Abel ticked off the list and all the Abels nearest to Hobart done and dusted. Mount Marian was the last on the list and we had been putting it off for a while as for some reason we thought it was really far. The truth is, once you get up from Collinsvale and on to the East West trail at the back of Mount Wellington, it’s literally a walk in the park. We drove in to the Myrtle Forest picnic area off Springdale road in Collinsvale and parked up a little down the road. The walk up to the pointy bits is the same as the one we took for Trestle Mountain back in December last year.
That had been my first outing with Odin, my newly acquired Olympus EM-1 and I had been very happy with how he had performed. I decided to set myself a little challenge this time out and opted to bring just one lens, the Panasonic 25mm f1.7. This is equivalent to a 50mm lens in full frame terms which is the closest to what the human eye sees apparently. 50mm lenses came as standard with pretty much every SLR camera back in the day.
So there was to be no wide angle lens for the big sweeping vistas or telephoto to zoom in on the distant details. I had a blast shooting with just the one focal length as it made me work for the images that bit more. I highly recommend giving it a go sometime if you’re looking for something a little different to try.
The walk up to the fire trail was a bit of a struggle and there were a few sections damaged from the recent floods, albeit not impassable. Once we got up onto the EW Trail we continued along and past where we would have turned off for Trestle. The last stretch of the walk to the base of Mount Marian didn’t take too long at all. We started our ascent through some really lovely bush and before we knew it, we were at the top! It literally felt like 5 minutes since we had left the main trail and started working our way through the narrow route to the summit. The sign at the start says there is minimal track marking but we found plenty. There were a number of green posts with bright orange arrows at the beginning of the route and then a slew of easily seen rock cairns that guided us to the top. Easy peasy!
The Winter sunlight on the way back down made the scene burst into colour and the beautiful muted reds and yellows were a sight to behold. We usually associate the colder months with grey, dreary scenes but not here in Tasmania, it was simply stunning. One of the prettiest walks we’ve done and I’m looking forward to getting back up there in the Summer when it will be another world of colours and textures.
Wonderful winter colours. Yes, it would be interesting to see it again in summer.