Tasmania: Ben Lomond National Park

Another day trip Sunday, this time to the east. It doesn't take long to get out of Launceston -- in just a few kilometers the city is gone and you are out in farms and forest. Ben Lomond National Park isn't far, maybe an hour out of the city.

To enter the park, you need to pay a registration fee. You write information on a registration envelope, put your money in, and drop it in a slot at the entrance booth. Only problem was, I didn't have anything to write with. So I found a sharp stick and poked it in the mud, and used this crude pen to scratch out my entry time and license plate number. I kind of worried they would find and expel me, but in the end I hardly saw any other people and no one in any kind of official capacity.

Once in the park, the road climbs through the trees and it becomes more and more barren.

Finally the trees stop altogether and the road approaches and then climbs switchbacks up what at first glance would be an unnavigable cliff.

At the top, the mountain isn't a mountain at all but a vast, open plateau. Very alpine -- you can tell that this is covered with snow for much of the year.

There is a small ski slope here, and a small village -- largely abandoned in the summer.

A barely-marked trail leaves the road and winds towards the summit.

There are houses up here! Small cabins, apparently privately owned, and somehow grandfathered into the national park.

Very cold here in the wind. Very isolated. At first glance it seems desolate -- until you look closely at the alpine vegetation scrabbling out a living underfoot.

I scrambled across rocks to the summit (although hardly any higher than the surrounding terrain). Then realized it was cold and remote and there was no one around for miles. A broken ankle here I suppose could prove fatal -- I worked my way very carefully back to the car.