Ben Lomond National Park, TAS

Ben Lomond National Park is a high-altitude park (around 1500m altitude) and contains Tasmania’s second highest peak – Legges Tor. It gets pretty cold and windy up there, even in summer – so we monitored the weather and picked a day when it might even get up to 19 degrees!

It was about an hour’s drive from Launceston, and to get into the park you need to ascend ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ – which is a notoriously famous steep gravel road with multiple switchbacks. It has been called the ‘most dangerous road in Tasmania’ – which clearly it isn’t if you look at road fatalities…! Anyway, it is perhaps more accurately described as ‘scary’ – and that depends a bit on what you are used to. It is certainly very steep and fairly narrow, with a gravel surface and big cliff drops at the side. It does however have some crash barriers.

Anyway, we successfully negotiated Jacob’s Ladder to arrive at the main car park, and we had two really great walks in amazing sunny weather, with great alpine scenery.

Our first walk was called the ‘Little Hell’ circuit, and it doubles as a cross-country ski trail in the winter, so there is not much of a walking trail. You pretty much just pick your way across the alpine plateau going from pole to pole through part soggy bog and part boulder field.

Our second walk went up to Legges Tor and the first part of this walk was a brand new, well-made, easy trail. The second part was pretty much finding your own way up to the top along the boulders.

On the way back out of the park we stopped at a viewing area where you could look out over the valley and down onto Jacob’s Ladder.