A Dangerous Business

Date: 2nd January 2026

Start: New Pelion Hut (km 32.7)

End: Kia Ora Hut (km 41)

Distance Travelled: 16.53 km

Total Distance Completed: 75.2 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: some Muppets song where Kermit goes, “we’re doing a sequel”

Availability of Nostrils: one’s filled with snot, the other’s filled with blood

Oh the joys of being sick on trail! I’ve had symptoms basically since I started but it didn’t get properly bad until today. Now I just feel completely wasted, not wanting to move at all. But I have to get out of here somehow, so we’ll just have to see how we get on tomorrow.

I was fine in the morning despite another, erm, “encouraging” report from the almighty Garmin. I packed up and got away from the hut relatively early. It’s a short stint to the next hut, but at the mid-point is Pelion Gap, which offers two possible side trips up to two different peaks: Mt Pelion East, or Mt Ossa, Tasmania’s highest mountain. A past, very optimistic Jono had the grand idea of climbing all 5 major summits on the Overland. I’ve already done three, but to finish the set would mean doing both peaks in the same day. Frankly, with my health the way it is, a single climb would have to do, and of course I was gonna do the big one.

For starters, we had a short climb to Pelion Gap on a shaded, forested path.

Nothing overly eventful happened on the climb up and after about 2 hours we were at the Gap. A wooden platform has been built for people to leave their packs and tackle the peaks with only a light day pack. However, leaving one’s pack unattended in these parts isn’t the wisest decision, as some resident currawongs have learnt how to open zips and take out people’s food. Not exactly a great sight to come back to, so we’ve been told to hide our food away and put our pack covers on.

Similar to the Oakleigh climb, the track up Ossa started with a gentle duckboarded trail around the side of Mt Doris through a section of bush known as the Japanese Gardens. Even once we did reach the start of the proper climb it was still pretty straightforward, albeit gradually getting steeper, becoming less of a walk and more of a scramble the further up we got.

By gradually I of course mean fairly rapidly if we’re being honest. We ditched our poles by a trail marker and continued our journey on our hands and knees, scrambling up to a gap between two peaks.

As is the standard with Tassie mountains, neither of these are the official top. Instead we have to descend through another gap between the two spires – scrambling over huge boulders all the way – before beginning the final push to the summit. Easier said than done, mind you, as part of the track was covered in snow.

We did our best to avoid to steepest sections of snow (it is recommended that you make friction your bestie on these sorts of climbs), coming to a plateau containing a small tarn and a relatively flat bit of snow that gave us some ideas for shenanigans later on. All the while, no matter where we turned, we were surrounded by a horizon of dolerite peaks and green valleys.

Only a few minutes later, we found the top of the mountain, marked rather unceremoniously with a simple metal survey marker drilled into the rock.

We have been incredibly lucky with the weather this whole trip. I was fully bracing myself for a barrage of rain – or snow – and heavy winds at some point along way, but here, on the roof of Tasmania, we had blue skies and zero wind. Essentially as perfect as you can get.

So the most logical next step when presented with these conditions is to play a round of 500 on said roof of Tasmania (I’m getting the hang of it now).

And once we got bored with that, we dropped back down to the snow, donned rainjackets and had a snowball fight.

We must’ve spent a good hour on the summit, but we still had a hut to reach. Having now notched three peaks on my belt, I felt pretty confident getting off Mt Ossa, but I was still taking things slowly and intentionally on my way down. The real challenge happened once we got down further and retrieved our poles.

The mixture of early afternoon heat, mild dehydration, and the cold I was suffering from combined to siphon away all my energy. Thankfully the track was easy, but I was cooked by the time I got back to Pelion Gap. And there was still 4.5 km to walk.

After a drink and some snacks I got underway, following a slowly descending path through the buttongrass.

In terms of my cold, we’d left the sore throat phase and entered the runny/congested nose phase. And of course I didn’t have any tissues on me. Apologies in advance for the gross visuals, but my chosen method for expunging the snot was to step off the trail, close one nostril, blow hard, and watch it fall to the ground. Problem solved, right? In a way, yes, but it had a frustrating side effect of making my other nostril start to bleed. For that I had to resort to wiping my nose with my buff, which now has loads of blood stains on it (future Jono here, that buff has since been washed twice and the blood stains are still there… yay).

So yeah, not fun in the slightest. I was not doing well, even when I finally reached Kia Ora Hut.

The hut’s name originates with a pioneer trapper/hunter called Paddy Hartnett who’d spent time working in New Zealand clearing fields for farming. He named the creek flowing past the hut and the rest is history.

I was in no mood for socialising when I arrived. Once my bed was made, I tried my best to recoup some lost energy by having a nap and eating dinner. It seemed to work, so I stayed up for a bit playing 500 with the gang plus Tali and Lauren, followed by a game of Greed with John and Alyssa, another couple we’d made friends with along the way. I still faded pretty quickly, getting to bed before 9pm and praying I could maybe at long last get a good night’s sleep.