By Hamish Jackson

West facing cliffs accessed from the Florentine valley.

The Jacksons did a few routes there 1996-1997. Further exploration ceased after they inadvertently got locked in by closure of the main Forestry gate. The main gate into the valley no longer gets locked so access has improved again.

The main Florentine valley gate is now kept open (access in 75mins drive from Hobart to the main valley road. Forestry activities sometimes dictate closure of side roads. Road '9E' was originally used for access for the first routes; this road is still visible on satellite images but is actually rather grown over and probably not the best access. For historic reference it is the road that ascended gradually, diagonally up the slopes from south to north under the cliff-line.

In 2024 Chirstophe Speer and Hamish Jackson re-visited the cliff with the intention of re-establishing access via a road to the NW of the cliff (that passes an old gravel Quarry). This proved to reasonably straight forward as apiarists and possibly bushwalking teams are still accessing roads high on the western slopes.

Road access to parking shown as continuous line on access topo below. The blue starts on the main Florentine road and the first turn off is around 20km from the start of the Florentine road. 2wd access is possible, assuming the roads are not too wet.

Drive through the Quarry (seen blue line on access topo) to find the rough continuation of the road around the northern edge of the quarry. Follow this narrow road east (2WD possible, but could be slippery) for approximately 200m past the Quarry until a good turn around point is reached (this is not the end of road, but obstacles were evident ahead anyway). From here it is easy to appreciate where the summit and cliff line is. Navigate off track (dashed line on access topo) through reasonably open bush up to the northern edge of the cliff line (90 mins). We used a GPS to aim for lowest point of scree lines. Continue up scree line until you are above the major scrub lines and then traverse under the cliff line to find Scud as the first major climbing landmark.

I recommend the minimum trip plan to be to drive and walk up during a cool or cloudy afternoon (4 hours access total from Hobart), camp and then climb the next day and return home that evening. 2 nights camping and 2 days climbing is even better. Fit parties could theoretically do a day trip with an early start, but this would be tough on the first trip.

Conditions: the cliff come into sun after midday and can get hot during the afternoon in sunny conditions eg when Maydena max temp is >24 degrees. Ideal conditions are windless, cloudy summer days.

Cliff base camping was used - sloping sites - with water from large gullies.

The best site is probably at the base of the low volume water fall between Scud and Tyler's line - a somewhat rough camp site suitable for 1 tent and fully exposed to westerly weather. Camp at the base of cliff on fine scree adjacent the base of the water-fall. So far this waterfall has always had water available.