Mt. Roland

Waking up at 7am on Sunday morning with an outside temperature of 1 degree made us even more determined to climb Mt. Roland regardless of rain or sunshine. There was no way I was getting up at this time for no reason at all no matter how bad the weather conditions we were climbing this mountain!

Arriving at the foot of Mt. Roland and gazing up at the sleepy giant surrounded by mist, unable to see the top of the mountain and with rain starting to come down still did not deter our unbreakable spirits of man vs. nature. It was a battle of common sense vs. our pride of being defeated. Being blokes (except for Ash)have a guess which one won?

Representing TAS was Ben Atkins, VIC (Ash Heritage), NSW (Ben Campbell) and QLD was yours truley. With such a broad pedigree still no sensible solution was achieved.

Ash, Ben Campbell, Ben Atkins

Cool little waterfalls. Sorry about the photo was hard trying to keep my camera still with my shaky ice cold hands

Kick arse tree growing around a rock

Campbell lining up for a delayed group shot. Wonder who is more sophisticated and intelligent? SLR camera or Campbell?

Beautiful things are always treacherous!

On top of the Plateau. You can see the path we were walking on had turned into a stream of water and rocks. Ash & Ben looking a tad wet and cold

The track that was leading us to the top of the mountain which is in the background, yet you cannot see it due to the harsh weather conditions.

Campbell, Atkins & Ash. This gives you a better shot of what we were walking in. This was easy compared to our hike up rocks and mud before hand

It was at this point that we had a group meeting and an executive decision was made to turn back and accept defeat. I also did not want to end up on the 5pm news with video footage of us being rescued by an energex helicopter. Some say we should not have even gone up there but at least we had the common sense to turn back.

Some absolute brainless so and so from NSW suggested we should climb the mountain in time for a sunrise photo. This means a night climb which will start around 2am due to the 3.5 hour climb it takes to the top. Its hard to understand how NSW won the last origin with ideas like this?

For more photos jump onto campbells blog site