We did a walk into Frenchmans Cap over 2 nights. The first night was friday night, we arrived at the carpark around 8pm and walked in to the campsite near the suspension bridge (near the Lodden river?). We set up camp at around 10pm with a bunch of mosquitos helping out.
The next morning we walked towards the hut … the new section of track bypassing the Lodden plains was open, so it was interesting to see that. We reached the hut at Lake Vera just before lunch and set up camp in one of the tent sites. A quick lunch and we started up towards Frenchmans .. the plan was to climb the summit and get back to our tents. After walking along the lake side path, the climb up to Barron’s Path begins, this is a reasonable climb and by the time we got to the pass we knew we weren’t going to make it to the mountain and back before dark. We certainly weren’t keen on descending from Barron’s pass in the dark, as the track is quite steep and narrow in sections.
So instead we took our time on the pass taking photos, chatting and soaking up the view (and sun, it was a hot day). At least now we know that none of us are young or fit enough to do a 2 day climb of Frenchmans anymore. We went back to camp and settled in the for the night … standard procedure for us is going to the helipad and sun baking and eating all the food we don’t want to carry out.
The next day was stinking hot, and I’m pretty sure I was suffering dehydration … usually I can power up hills without any trouble, but this particular day I really struggled, and was well behind everyone else, having to stop every 5 – 10 mins to cool off. Things got better after we’d reached the top of the last big climb and we entered some forested parts of the track, which was a lot cooler.
