Mount Cobbler

A long walk for a sunset

Hi, I am a landscape and nature photographer based in Melbourne, Australia and enjoy using my camera to explore our remaining wild places and better connect with nature.

Earlier in the year I headed up into the mountains to do a three day, 30km figure-8 shaped walk over the Mount Cobbler Plateau. The highlight was expected to be the summit of Mount Cobbler, and from a photography perspective it certainly was.

With an early start, the 4 hour drive was done by early morning and I was ready for the first section up the Muesli Spur track. This was the toughest section of the walk, with a 600m elevation gain over 2.8km. My pack was not light – with a lot of camera gear (including two tripods) and 4 litres of water – it was going to be tough section.

Indeed, as I was getting into the task I met two fit-looking women coming down the hill. We had a quick chat and their parting remark to “enjoy” the climb certainly had a sarcastic tone to it. It wasn’t long before I was questioning my choice of gear.

The image below from the track gives a sense of the climb. This is looking to the southeast towards the ridgeline from Mt Speculation in the centre but obscured by cloud across to the Crosscut Saw at the right (I wrote about a trip there the previous summer in If you can’t stand the heat).

At least a steep climb is a short climb, and with the work done, I had a break at the top and enjoyed the cool breeze amongst the trees, with views 280 degrees around.

From here, I walked along a 4-wheel-drive track for a little way before turning off up another spur towards Mount Cobbler. The walking track gently worked its way up through beautiful eucalypt forest (including Mountain Gum, Broad-leaved Peppermint, and Snow Gum as I got higher) with views to the east across the plateau. It was perfect walking conditions.

Before long I reached my campsite in a saddle at 1430 metres, where I set up camp and had some food, knowing that I would probably not be back before dark.

Feeling refreshed and with much lighter pack, I headed up the kilometre or two to the top of Mount Cobbler. At this point the plateau of sedimentary rocks sweeps upwards before dropping off in a series of dramatic cliffs facing west. This summit section is largely exposed rock with low lying heath and the occasional Snow Gum.

The summit of Mount Cobbler itself is a bulge of rock that is separated by a steep gap, as can be seen below (taken the next morning). I decided not to climb to the true summit – you can’t photograph the mountain you are standing on.

I had reached the summit a couple of hours before sunset to give myself plenty of time to explore and admire the views. The weather was becoming more ominous as the clouds that had been moving through all day seemed to be thickening. All I could do is watch and hope that there may be some nice evening light.

The timelapse below shows the extreme light changes over nearly an hour and a quarter from 7.53pm to 9.07 pm every 7 seconds (sunset was at 8.36pm). As you can see, I was very fortunate to get moments of spectacular light. Fortunately, I was set up and ready to go. Thank you, second tripod.

Here are some of the photos I captured. The image below was 15 minutes before sunset showing off Mount Cobbler in all its glory.

I then turned my attention towards the setting sun and zoomed in to get this detail shot of the ridgelines. This image is a credit to the amazing optics modern lenses have.

At this point I was taking a lot of bracketed images as the dynamic range was huge and the light changing so rapidly. The shot below was 6 minutes after the sunset. This is an HDR merge of 3 bracketed images in Lightroom, with a manually blended horizon with the least exposed image to soften the cloud structure.

I was also taking bracketed 3-shot panoramas (9 images in all). Rather than a Lightroom HDR pano (which over-emphasised the contrast in the clouds), I made two panos in Lightroom, two stops of light apart and blended them. Although this image was only 6 minutes after the one above, I had missed the best of the colour and the cloud structure was being emphasised as the light moved into blue hour.

Finally I captured this image looking east across the Mount Cobbler plateau towards the Viking-Razor Wilderness Area in the centre, with the ridgeline extending away from the camera to the right from Mount Buggery, the Crosscut Saw and Mount Howitt. This was 20 minutes after sunset, requiring a 10 sec exposure.

At last I decided to head back down the track. It took a bit of searching in the dark to find where the track started from the rocky summit even though I had taken great care to note its location. After a long day, I was in my sleeping bag by 10 o’clock.

The next morning I climbed back to the summit before sunrise. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day with little wind and a few wispy clouds that caught the delicate first light. After the spectacular colours of the previous evening, it was nice to spend a relaxing hour or so photographing more intimate scenes. I was very pleased to find this portrait of a Snow Gum below - my favourite image of the trip.

With blue skies and lovely weather, I really didn’t get any more reasonable photos. Not that I cared.

I walked down to Lake Cobbler where I spent the rest of that day exploring the area, including Dangdongadale Falls, Victoria’s tallest waterfall (I have a route mapped out to get to the base of the falls during Spring when there will be more flow). And the third day began with a slow start and, although the day heated up, the last 8 kilometres was mostly downhill back to the car.

This is a classic Victorian high-country walk and an opportunity to get into some remote and rugged country. Although not the most productive trip photographically, I am getting to know the country really well – the geography and vegetation, and how it interacts with the light in different conditions. This knowledge will pay off in the long run – I already have a couple more trips (and photography subjects) in mind.