It was a Friday afternoon when Crawf put the call out for this one. I didn't have much planned for the weekend and Crawf sends an email out 'who's keen to come for a jog up Parson and Clerk Mountain tomorrow?'. My instant answer - 'i'm in'. Turns out I was the only taker, so the two of us left Launceston at 4.30am to head up to Arthurs Lake to drive in on Gunns March road to tackle the peak from the plateau.

By 6.15am we were off at a gentle jog. We interspersed this with walking and made good progress. We followed an old road for a while, before it gave way to beautiful alpine moorland with heaps of cushion plants. Magical stuff, especially with the sunrise. We also passed some old fishing shacks before making entering forest for the final climb to the peak. It was pretty easy going and only a little scrubby. We reached the top of the forested hill to see the summit of the peak in the distance. It looked miles away but we soon quickly crossed a valley with a patchy cover of trees before making the final rock scramble to the summit. It was fairly cool on top but the views were good. We could see the entire route we had taken, right back to the car. It had taken us 1hr 45mins to reach the top.

We decided to take a different route back and descended directly to an open moorland that we then followed to meet up with our inward route. The majority of the return trip was at a slow jog and we made it back to the car by 9.15am. What a great way to start the day! Back home in time for breakfast with the family. Would definately head back to Parson and Clerk again!

STATS

Time 2hrs 57mins

Distance 15.06km

Ascent 230m

GALLERY BELOW