Lost in the Tasmanian Wilderness

Finally, something bad happened. In my recent reread of Pam Houston’s A Little Bit More About Me, I was struck once again by the fact that the best adventure stories are the ones where something goes quite wrong. Thus far in my adventures in New Zealand, despite the copious amount of hiking in the dark, the time the group was separated, mapless and hiking in the dark, and our many on-the-fly accommodations decisions, nothing has ever seriously gone wrong with our outdoor adventures. But, alas, I put this energy into the world when I was reading my book, and in Tasmania, it happened. A number of things went quite– not dangerously, and not even horrendously, but notably– wrong. 

It all started with our whacky travel planning (done by me) in which we flew from Melbourne to Hobart at 5am and then planned to hit the trail that day. Sleep-deprived and somewhat cranky, we had a silent car ride to the airport with my wonderful friend Zac, all revived during the flight somewhat, and hit the ground running in Hobart. Frances and I bought groceries and went shopping, I ate mall sushi at 10:30am, Dylan wrote a job application in a cafe, it was all perfectly normal until we got in the car to head to our trailhead. 

Dylan and I had both read the same blog about this hike, and he had a memory that one driving route was much easier than the other, as the roads would eventually turn into a labyrinth of logging roads. So we picked the north route and had a lovely drive through central Tasmania, which felt a hell of a lot like Maine. The similarities only continued as we found ourselves amongst the logging roads, which, although they were all eucalyptus instead of pine, made me feel right at home in the North Maine Woods. Our directions quickly proved to have led us astray, after a pin turn onto a Tiger Road resulted in some horrible sounds from beneath the rental car, and I handed over the wheel to Frances. Onwards we wove, debating our next steps and vaguely using our google maps blue dot to try to get closer to the trailhead dot. We tried various right hand turns onto ever-sketchier, overgrown trails, discussed the possibility of camping somewhere random for the night… or getting murdered, and eventually reasoned out that the main road we kept returning to would take us where we needed to go.

Does this look like a road to you?!

It did, and by 3pm (sigh) we were at the trailhead once again. As we all packed our bags and excitedly talked about dinner, Dylan asked, “did anyone get fuel?”. Crickets. After some head-banging and food re-apportioning, we finally hit the trail map-less, fuel-less, clueless, but ready for some excitement. Our plan was a 10 mile hike up to a very beautiful alpine lake, which we knew we were doubtful to reach by nightfall. In we hiked, through marshes and wide open buttongrass fields, tromping through huge muddy ruts which turned out to be full of leeches :(. We debated the global economy and commented on how much the landscape looked like the savannah, which was wicked cool, and also discussed what terrifying animals might be all around us.

Tasmania or Tanzania?

As night fell it became clear we were not going to make it to our destination, and in an uncharacteristic reaction, Frances was deadset against us continuing and started urgently searching for a good spot to pitch the tent. Excited by this change of attitude and the thought of being asleep before 10pm, I followed her lead, and after felling a couple buttongrass plants, we snuggled in for the night, ate bagels, and gossiped until bedtime. 

The next morning we woke up frosty and early, with plans of trying to make it to the lake then head back out to meet up with Caroline in Hobart mid-day. Some alarm snoozing and general sleepiness later, we eventually packed up and decided to hike in the direction of the lake for an hour and then see how it went. We didn’t make it far before realizing we were way further than expected, so instead plopped down for some solo journal time then pointed our boots back to the trailhead. 

All was going well (other than a couple of leeches) until we made it to the river. On the way in, we had crossed over a log a couple of feet above the river, which was semi-nerve wracking and a little slick. To get there, we had navigated upstream from a semi-submerged log which we approached when we first got to the river bed, to which I had then said “I know there’s a log we can cross, according to the blog I think it’s downstream, or we can go upstream where it’s shallower”. Seeing no log downstream, we headed up, rounded a corner via bushwhacking, found a log we could cross, and refound the track on the other side of the river. 

When we returned to the river on our way out, we crossed a different raised log which lacked the markers of the one we had previously walked across. Upstream of the log we walked across on day 2 was a semi-submerged log, which we reasoned couldn’t possibly be the same semi-submerged log from the day before. Dylan, to his credit, thought it was, but Frances and I overruled him, and we determined that we were probably a bit upstream of where we’d crossed the day before. 

Enter more than two hours of traipsing downstream, crossing hundreds of downed logs and trying to guess where we were based on the shitty brochure picture of the trail. After a couple of hours, we stopped to eat lunch in a sunny patch. It was, no doubt, the most lost I’ve ever been, with the least resources and the least ability to figure my way out of it. Instead of fear, though, I felt a tremendous amount of safety with my friends, gratitude for the warm weather, and awareness of what an awesome story it would make, how awesome it is that my life is full of such silly adventures as getting lost in the Tasmanian wilderness. During our low energy lunch I kept reminding myself that it was a beautiful day, and that we had plenty of time before sundown, plus plenty of food if we needed to cowboy camp that night. 

Scouting

Hundreds of downed logs

The crux of the mission

While Dylan and I ate, and I reflected on the day, Frances kept trekking downriver, sure that the background of one of her photos from the day before matched our angle to the mountains across the river, and Dylan and I sat quietly. We then decided to head back upstream, sticking closer to the water to make sure we didn’t miss our log, and somehow managed to cover the same distance in only 45 minutes. 

Before long we were right where we started, at least grateful to have retraced our steps successfully. We bushwhacked a bit more to the semi-submerged log and then, there it was, our trail from the day before, leading us easily away from the water, no more than four feet from where we had stood three hours prior, and the previous day. Feeling like some true fools, and marveling at how three experienced outdoors-people could have gotten so, so lost, we laughed, shook our heads, and headed back towards the parking lot. We were back to the car in about 40 minutes, and flew back to Hobart, feeling high on life and drunk on misadventure. 

Tasmania or Maine?

Our Tasmanian adventure continued on basically without a hitch– we returned to Hobart for the night, stayed in a lovely hostel, then took off the next morning for a second trip to the “Free Capes” Track, where we traversed insanely stunning cliff coastlines and walked on a truly mind-boggling number of boardwalks, and constituting our first trip where we stayed in one spot and day-hiked from our tent, and parted ways a few days later to continue our spring breaks. The spirit of our misadventure stayed with me though, that day of scrambling over logs and laughing over our mistakes, the deep knowledge we had gotten something horribly wrong, and the equally present knowledge that we’d figure our way out of it. Finally, something went wrong, but it my eyes, it was pretty alright.