Tomorrow I head off to Tasmania to meet an old friend, Greg, to take a six-day backpacking trip through the Walls of Jerusalem region. I’ve visited Tasmania a number of times before, doing heaps of day hiking but this will be my first Tassie multi-day backpacking trip. For those of you that follow along on my walks, I typically aim to do an annual solo long distance thru-hike (>1,000 kms / >30 days) so this ~one week hike will be more of a mini-walk for me - but don’t fret, another long thru-hike is coming this winter! It all started with a call from Greg, suggesting we go on a walk together. I’ve known Greg for nearly 35 years and he a great walking partner: easy going yet also an elite athlete, top orienteer and an overall adventurer. My biggest issue is keeping up with him although we had a good hike together on South Australia’s Wild South Coast Way in 2023. Why Greg enjoys walking with a plodder like me is beyond comprehension! Anyhow, it’s not really hiking season here in South Australia (currently bone dry conditions combined with high fire danger) so we decided to look farther afield for our walk. Tasmania seemed like a great choice for this time of year and we were spoiled for choice. Everyone and their dog seems to walk the gorgeous and iconic Overland Track but the thought of numerous hikers and crowded huts full of snoring walkers is a turn-off for me. Lesser known, but adjacent to the Overland Track, is the Walls of Jerusalem (WoJ) National Park. It doesn’t have the world class infrastructure of the Overland Track but is reportedly as beautiful but with an only fraction of the visitors. In fact, many experienced hikers prefer WoJ over Cradle Mtn- St Clair national park. “Located in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, the Walls of Jerusalem is a wild and inspiring alpine park with a labyrinth of highland lakes, craggy mountains and elegant stands of pure pencil pine forests. Its stunning landscape of precipitous dolerite peaks, moraines and tarns are the result of glaciation.” (Ref https://parks.tas.gov.au/explore-our-parks/walls-of-jerusalem-national-park) Greg told me he had competed in a mountain marathon race in the eastern WoJ region and thought it was gorgeous country. Sounds great! The most popular WoJ hike is a short 3-day ~30km WoJ loop circuit featuring what I consider low kilometres per day. It’s short enough that ambitious walkers even day hike the best of it. I’m not one who enjoys sitting around camp for hours so decided we should range farther afield to bulk this walk up and explore some of the lakes and peaks in this area. Six days seemed like a good duration from a both a food carry and daily walk distance perspective. With that, our trip plan quickly fell together. The rest is logistics... Walk Plan ----------- After researching other's hikes in this area, I planned the hike using AllTrails, Google Earth and a couple of paper maps that I'll bring along 1] Walls of Jerusalem National Park map, 1:25,000 2] Cradle Mountain / Lake St Clair 1:100,000 - a bit too zoomed out but i was trying to avoid carrying 3-4 detailed maps. Postscript: I would not recommend a map at large 1:100,000 scale now that the walk is completed. Even Greg, an expert navigator, found the lack of detail at this scale inhibiting. Get the extra 1:25,000 maps for best navigation. Our walk plan has us covering ~90 kms cumulative as we explore the lakes and peaks in the region. Our trip starts at the Walls of Jerusalem Carpark and end at Lees Paddock and we visit many of the region’s highlights. It's a bit hard for me to estimate our walking pace as some of the trails outside the loop are reportedly overgrown and slower going. Plus the terrain may be challenging in spots. And most of all, I have a bad back that I need to manage, so no telling how it might slow me up. So what is a reasonable walking distance in WoJ is a big unknown to me. When I thru-hike on good trails, I can maintain 4kph and knock of 25-30 kms per day. I anticipate that these trails will be more difficult and slower but no idea how much. We'll aim to walk 6-8 hrs a day and cover 12-20 kilometres per day. Our six-day walk map plan can be found at: https://www.alltrails.com/explore/map/mount-jerusalem-trail-the-temple-and-solomon-s-throne-dff8e9c?u=m&sh=ofbrmh Postscript: We were able to successfully walk our plan but only achieved a slow 2-3 kph daily average for the tougher overgrown / steep sections but Greg could have gone much faster without me. Trailhead Transportation ----------- There are plenty of providers offering trailhead transport although many have a minimum passenger number / minimum fee and can be quite expensive - more than the cost of my flight over! We are using Wild Island Adventures which had a good price and did not require minimums. Plus they are dropping us a one location and picking us up at another, and storing daypacks for us at no extra cost. A real deal! Gear ----------- As predominantly a solo hiker, I had initially planned to bring my own stuff; that is I’ll walk with a partner but Greg does Greg and I do me. A big advantage of having fully redundant gear is that we can separate if we want and aim to meet up at camp without much risk. This weighs on me as I’m concerned about keeping up with someone of Greg’s elite level of fitness so if we have full gear we can each “hike our own hike” if necessary. However, Greg is a social person and talked (bullied? 😉) me into sharing a tent and cooking kit with him. Greg 1, Carl 0. On paper, we should shave off a bit of pack weight this way by not carrying redundant gear. However this means we need to keep together. Greg’s tent is a nice lightweight 3-person tent which will be reasonably roomy for two of us. He’ll carry the tent and I’ll carry the cooking kit plus a few other things to even the weight split out. Postscript: one thing he made me carry was a book! What an extravagance! 😛) You can see the gear I’m taking at this link: https://lighterpack.com/r/5vdr7t Weather ———— Tassie being Tassie, when Alpine hiking, you have to plan for all sorts of weather, including snow storms, even in summer. We’re walking in early autumn and the forecast actually looks very good with only a few showers forecast over the upcoming week. Our first day, Saturday, looks to be the wettest with more showers forecast towards the end of our six-day hike. Maximum highs will be in the upper teens and lows might approach freezing. However, mountain weather is highly variable and unpredictable - just last week the forecasts were predicting 45 mm rain near the end of our hike. We’ll just need to be prepared for all weather. PostScript: we had a showery first day and then outstandingly fine weather for the remaining five days, high's in the upper teens and lows near freezing. Minimal wind and cloud. Just perfect. Lack of sunscreen actually became a problem. (Continued in Tip Section!)

Hiking/Backpacking

Food ———— I’m one of those hikers who usually resupplies with off-the-shelf items from grocery stores plus I carefully plan what I’m going to eat (and carry!). I aim for a gold star carry, meaning when I finish the hike I've eaten everything and carry out no excess food. Greg has a different style that I had to adapt to. He pre-bought dehydrated backpacking meals to share for dinner and we agreed to carry our own individual brekkie and lunch supplies as we have different eating styles. On shorter walks like this one, I find I have a diminished appetite, exacerbated by the fact that I know I’ll be pushing myself on this hike which further diminishes my appetite. Nevertheless, when we went to the grocery store (without a plan, oh foolish Carl!), I’m amazed at what ends up in our cart! Greg is happy to carry heaps of heavy food: large cheese blocks, cups of yogurt, pre-made sandwiches, cans of tuna, bag of cashews, jar of Nutella, punnet of cherry tomatoes and even a full loaf of bread! His food volume is enormous! 😳 Greg is exceptionally fit and strong enough to carry this food load but I’m not. Regardless, influenced by Greg, I succumbed to our orgy of shopping and agreed to things I shouldn’t have bought! I over-estimated what I would feel like eating and carried some heavy items like a large cheese block (in addition to the one Greg carried!), an emergency ramen noodle pack (I never carry emergency food as I could live weeks on my body fat!) and even extra rice to supplement our evening dehydrated meals! Big mistake on my part… Postscript: Buy food to a plan that fits your diet / energy needs and don’t get influenced by your hiking partner. As I feared, I had little appetite and struggled to eat what I carried. In fact, on our last night, I dug a deep hole and buried the excess organic food (no packaging as I carried that out) so I wouldn’t have to pack it out. Worst case of over-packing I had ever done in many thousands of kilometres of backpacking! Greg, on the other hand, ate the enormous amounts he carried so he probably bought appropriate food for his needs, albeit quite heavy. Training ————- I walk ~50 kilometres per week and do daily pilates but this was far insufficient to keep up with Greg who does daily aerobic training. I suffered up steep climbs trying to keep up with Greg while he said his heart rate never got above 90 bpm. I the evenings, I was so exhausted I was asleep by 8pm and did not even have the energy to write my journal! Greg definitely slowed down for me but, if I had been walking solo, I would have slowed even further. I wanted to "hike my own hike" but as Greg reasonably pointed out, this would mean he would be forced to hike my hike... a big issue when you have two partners with different fitness levels. Lesson for me is to train more if I hike with Greg again! Carl / Pilgrim

Walls Of Jerusalem, Tasmania

Launceston, Tasmania, Australia

time : Mar 28, 2025 12:13 PM

duration : 0h 2m 9s

distance : 0 km

total_ascent : 1 m

highest_point : 36 m

avg_speed : 2.3 km/h

user_id : gstreet

user_firstname : Carl

user_lastname : Greenstreet

Tomorrow I head off to Tasmania to meet an old friend, Greg, to take a six-day backpacking trip through the Walls of Jerusalem region. I’ve visited Tasmania a number of times before, doing heaps of day hiking but this will be my first Tassie multi-day backpacking trip. For those of you that follow along on my walks, I typically aim to do an annual solo long distance thru-hike (>1,000 kms / >30 days) so this ~one week hike will be more of a mini-walk for me - but don’t fret, another long thru-hike is coming this winter! It all started with a call from Greg, suggesting we go on a walk together. I’ve known Greg for nearly 35 years and he a great walking partner: easy going yet also an elite athlete, top orienteer and an overall adventurer. My biggest issue is keeping up with him although we had a good hike together on South Australia’s Wild South Coast Way in 2023. Why Greg enjoys walking with a plodder like me is beyond comprehension! Anyhow, it’s not really hiking season here in South Australia (currently bone dry conditions combined with high fire danger) so we decided to look farther afield for our walk. Tasmania seemed like a great choice for this time of year and we were spoiled for choice. Everyone and their dog seems to walk the gorgeous and iconic Overland Track but the thought of numerous hikers and crowded huts full of snoring walkers is a turn-off for me. Lesser known, but adjacent to the Overland Track, is the Walls of Jerusalem (WoJ) National Park. It doesn’t have the world class infrastructure of the Overland Track but is reportedly as beautiful but with an only fraction of the visitors. In fact, many experienced hikers prefer WoJ over Cradle Mtn- St Clair national park. “Located in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, the Walls of Jerusalem is a wild and inspiring alpine park with a labyrinth of highland lakes, craggy mountains and elegant stands of pure pencil pine forests. Its stunning landscape of precipitous dolerite peaks, moraines and tarns are the result of glaciation.” (Ref https://parks.tas.gov.au/explore-our-parks/walls-of-jerusalem-national-park) Greg told me he had competed in a mountain marathon race in the eastern WoJ region and thought it was gorgeous country. Sounds great! The most popular WoJ hike is a short 3-day ~30km WoJ loop circuit featuring what I consider low kilometres per day. It’s short enough that ambitious walkers even day hike the best of it. I’m not one who enjoys sitting around camp for hours so decided we should range farther afield to bulk this walk up and explore some of the lakes and peaks in this area. Six days seemed like a good duration from a both a food carry and daily walk distance perspective. With that, our trip plan quickly fell together. The rest is logistics... Walk Plan ----------- After researching other's hikes in this area, I planned the hike using AllTrails, Google Earth and a couple of paper maps that I'll bring along 1] Walls of Jerusalem National Park map, 1:25,000 2] Cradle Mountain / Lake St Clair 1:100,000 - a bit too zoomed out but i was trying to avoid carrying 3-4 detailed maps. Postscript: I would not recommend a map at large 1:100,000 scale now that the walk is completed. Even Greg, an expert navigator, found the lack of detail at this scale inhibiting. Get the extra 1:25,000 maps for best navigation. Our walk plan has us covering ~90 kms cumulative as we explore the lakes and peaks in the region. Our trip starts at the Walls of Jerusalem Carpark and end at Lees Paddock and we visit many of the region’s highlights. It's a bit hard for me to estimate our walking pace as some of the trails outside the loop are reportedly overgrown and slower going. Plus the terrain may be challenging in spots. And most of all, I have a bad back that I need to manage, so no telling how it might slow me up. So what is a reasonable walking distance in WoJ is a big unknown to me. When I thru-hike on good trails, I can maintain 4kph and knock of 25-30 kms per day. I anticipate that these trails will be more difficult and slower but no idea how much. We'll aim to walk 6-8 hrs a day and cover 12-20 kilometres per day. Our six-day walk map plan can be found at: https://www.alltrails.com/explore/map/mount-jerusalem-trail-the-temple-and-solomon-s-throne-dff8e9c?u=m&sh=ofbrmh Postscript: We were able to successfully walk our plan but only achieved a slow 2-3 kph daily average for the tougher overgrown / steep sections but Greg could have gone much faster without me. Trailhead Transportation ----------- There are plenty of providers offering trailhead transport although many have a minimum passenger number / minimum fee and can be quite expensive - more than the cost of my flight over! We are using Wild Island Adventures which had a good price and did not require minimums. Plus they are dropping us a one location and picking us up at another, and storing daypacks for us at no extra cost. A real deal! Gear ----------- As predominantly a solo hiker, I had initially planned to bring my own stuff; that is I’ll walk with a partner but Greg does Greg and I do me. A big advantage of having fully redundant gear is that we can separate if we want and aim to meet up at camp without much risk. This weighs on me as I’m concerned about keeping up with someone of Greg’s elite level of fitness so if we have full gear we can each “hike our own hike” if necessary. However, Greg is a social person and talked (bullied? 😉) me into sharing a tent and cooking kit with him. Greg 1, Carl 0. On paper, we should shave off a bit of pack weight this way by not carrying redundant gear. However this means we need to keep together. Greg’s tent is a nice lightweight 3-person tent which will be reasonably roomy for two of us. He’ll carry the tent and I’ll carry the cooking kit plus a few other things to even the weight split out. Postscript: one thing he made me carry was a book! What an extravagance! 😛) You can see the gear I’m taking at this link: https://lighterpack.com/r/5vdr7t Weather ———— Tassie being Tassie, when Alpine hiking, you have to plan for all sorts of weather, including snow storms, even in summer. We’re walking in early autumn and the forecast actually looks very good with only a few showers forecast over the upcoming week. Our first day, Saturday, looks to be the wettest with more showers forecast towards the end of our six-day hike. Maximum highs will be in the upper teens and lows might approach freezing. However, mountain weather is highly variable and unpredictable - just last week the forecasts were predicting 45 mm rain near the end of our hike. We’ll just need to be prepared for all weather. PostScript: we had a showery first day and then outstandingly fine weather for the remaining five days, high's in the upper teens and lows near freezing. Minimal wind and cloud. Just perfect. Lack of sunscreen actually became a problem. (Continued in Tip Section!)