PANTONEYS CROWN – APRIL 2012
Baal Bone Gap > Baal Bone Point > Crown Creek > Pantoneys Crown > Crown Creek > Hughes Defile > Blue Rocks Pass > The Pondage > McLeans Pass > Baal Bone Gap
This walk didn’t have much about it that warranted a blog post, except for what we found at The Pondage. I love the Pantoneys Crown walk, I’ve done it a three or four times already, the first time being back in 2001 (when we didn’t know about the water source). A couple of friends hadn’t been there before, or wanted to do a return trip, so we set out at Easter for four days with the intention of avoiding the terrible fire trail walk out by exiting via Hughes Defile.
We parked our cars at the usual parking spot if you are going to McLeans Pass and then headed down to Baal Bone Gap. 
Baal Bone Gap to the top of Pantoneys Crown trip notes are all over the net, so wont bore you with that, except to say that having 3 climbers along on the trip really speeded up the pace of getting down Baal Bone Point and up Pantoneys Crown.
We were up the top at the usual campsite with plenty of time to go get water from the secret water source up there (which almost everyone knows about). Lovely night watching the sun set and then around the campfire, although we were all in bed early as it had been a long day.
Saturday morning we were up early and got away without delay crossing the top of Pantoneys and then going down the other end, using the handline that’s been set up. I’ve gone down a different way in the past but for the life of me can’t find it!
The route down to Crown Creek was straight forward and we camped at the bottom, fortunately there was water in the Creek, it’s often dry.
Next morning we wandered down the fire trail for a few hundred metres and started up Hughes Defile. I’ve been up and down Hughes Defile before but for the life of me, if there was a track in the past I couldn’t find it, so we basically went up the creek. It was pretty average, very untidy and we were all over the scrubbiness of it, so we opted to go up onto 
the spur and avoid the Defile entirely. It was a good route, but again quite scrubby but at least there were some spots where we could climb up and over pagodas. By lunch time we were at the Hughes Defile pass and had lunch. Then it was a simple matter of walking over to Blue Rocks pass and then down to the Pondage.
None of the others had been to The Pondage before so I navigated our way down. I knew what I was looking for, a large white sandy area with trees in it. As I got closer, the terrain just didn’t look right, and the closer I got, the more I thought “I’m in the wrong spot”, and then we arrived at a lake, truly not what I was expecting. As it turned out there’d been over 100ml of rain in the previous month, and The Pondage was flooded, not something you see every day, and not something that many people would ever have seen.
This meant that our campsite was under a metre of water, so we scouted around to a spot I knew had at least a little high ground and found a few flat spots and made our campfire, there was a lot of fuel on the ground but no need to worry about that this time with so much water to put the fire out! We marvelled at the sight, then enjoyed the rest of the day and evening around the campfire.
Next day we simply walked out the usual route and back to the vehicles. A great weekend, third time I’ve done the trip. I’ve added another variation to my wish list though … do the usual Pantoney’s Crown route but exit via Point Cameron straight to The Pondage, would only take 3 days and would be a spectacular walk with little or no scrub (well, only what you’d get going up to Point Cameron)! Might wait a few years, though, have been there twice in 12 months now, time for a rest.