Doubletop Circuit
Trail photos
Author
Trail stats
- Distance
- 8.28 mi
- Elevation gain
- 2,241 ft
- Technical difficulty
- Difficult
- Elevation loss
- 2,241 ft
- Max elevation
- 3,941 ft
- TrailRank
-
50
3.3
- Min elevation
- 2,223 ft
- Trail type
- Loop
- Moving time
- 3 hours 21 minutes
- Time
- 6 hours 54 minutes
- Coordinates
- 2373
- Uploaded
- April 13, 2019
- Recorded
- April 2019
near Tregony, Queensland (Australia)
Viewed 762 times, downloaded 32 times
Trail photos
Itinerary description
Great little hike/climb with outstanding scenery.
Waypoints
Photo
3,261 ft
Photo
Comments (4)
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I have followed this trail View more
Information
Easy to follow
Scenery
Difficult
Need to be confindent climbing through cliff breaks and navigating through lantana. Would not want a big group. Footpad easy to loose. Map and compass and navigation skills are required. Note , there is no track on a foot pad. Let's keep it that way.
I have followed this trail View more
Information
Easy to follow
Scenery
Very difficult
Your route is exactly the one I walked yesterday with a party of four. Conditions have changed drastically on this walk compared to your description. Probably due to a combination of the 2019 bushfires followed by the heavy rains of 2021. Regrowth is extremely thick and weedy.
Obstacle 1: Ascent of the south-west ridge of Mount Doubletop runs into a very large and unavoidable gympie gympie tree forest it took us 45 minutes to get through.
Obstacle 2: Descent of the south-west ridge from Swan Knoll (after traversing part of the main range crest from Double Top - the main range section being the highlight of the walk, I can see why the 3 day walk is popular) the grass is extremely high and dense, with hidden rocks and covered in creeper vines that constantly trip you. Pushing through this vegetation is exhausting and slows progress considerably.
Obstacle 3: On arriving in the lower sections of the ridge, the entire area is covered in over head high dense lantana. We bashed through about 1.5km of Lantana to get to the creek just before Lemon Tree (the unofficial name for the grassy strip in your third last photo).
All of this resulted in taking nearly 10 hours to do the hike - we were still bashing through lantana when nightfall hit. In addition our GPS was playing up, and not being accurate making navigation in the lantana where you have no view of the terrain confusing. We almost contemplated an uncomfortable night in the bush - we walked the last 1.8km of fire trail back to our car and waded through creek crossings by torchlight at night.
This was probably all a lot easier before the intense regrowth, I would not recommend it for anyone but the most experienced (and our party was experienced) and fit until something happens to control the heavy vegetation.
Appreciate your comments. It certainly seems like the 2019 bushfires had a negative effect there as in many places along the main range. I did North Peak, Rocky Creek and Isolated Peak on Barney late last year and the gullies there had the fires and they are all full of wattle and kennardia vines which are a real pain. Did the top of the mountain survive the fires. It is such a beautiful place. 2WD vehicles could easily access the start back then.
I was looking at this trip, because there is a fantastic spot to pitch a tent on one of the two peaks of Doubletop and I wanted to go back to sped the night, but then I read the comments. Unfortunately this is another reason why I sort of stopped going more remote bush in SEQ: too many weeds, vines and gympie-gympie. The going is getting soo slow...