Warspite-Indefatigable 21 July 2007 Report by DM

Unfortunately, this trip turned out to be a bit of a (safe) epic. It started badly when the coordinator found out that his car had a flat tyre and arrived at Assumption school late around 6.20am. Thanks to cell phones the others had waited.

We put one vehicle at Mt Indefatigable car park and started from Black Prince car park about 9.30am. Around the lake and up a steep trail to some nice meadows and then up the steep scree to the col by Mt Warspite. This slope was mostly covered in snow, which made for easy steps safeguarded by an ice-axe.

The weather was very pleasant with scattered clouds and some wind especially later in the day on the ridge. Some good scrambling brought us to the Mt Warspite summit about 1.30pm for lunch, photos etc.

Although a bit harder (RMRA SC7?), the connecting ridge to Mt Invincible was traversed relatively smoothly with some route finding aided by the occasional cairn.

The new register showed that we were the first to summit these peaks this year 2007. Soon after 3.30pm we started south towards Mt Indefatigable. Unfortunately, within 50m, we encountered a very narrow loose ridge with exposure. Using the rope we negotiated this but it took an hour.

Time was running out and with much unknown ridge between us and the Indefatigable hiking trail, we opted to bail.

With some difficulty we descended east from our ridge location towards the Gypsum Mine Trail. In retrospect, we might have found it easier to retrace to Invincible summit before descending east to this trail (as suggested by Kane). We found some good scree to descend to the upper end of the Gypsum Trail by about 9.00pm. Here ultra Lisa forged ahead with the car keys. The overgrown trail led to the highway via an interesting crossing of the Smith-Dorrien Creek. We reached the highway about 11.30pm and Lisa showed up in the car at 12.15am having jogged the 5km of road in the dark (headlamp). An uneventful car journey and I was home at 2.30am.

A 14-hour trip with 2 peaks in good weather and better company. The traverse remains for another day – maybe opposite direction Indefatigable to Warspite. C & S David, participants: Lisa,John,Stan.

In May 2020, David added one digitized slide.