Climies Track and Pieman Heads. October 2018
Last weekend I got to jump in as passenger to drive the iconic Climies Track.
The track is on the west coast of Tasmania, about halfway down and connects the two tiny shack communities of Trial Harbour and Granville Harbour. The track can be done in either direction and we did it from south to north (Trial to Granville).
Leaving Burnie at 6:00am we made good time and after a couple of short food and refuel stops got to trial at around 9:00am.
The last stop before either Granville or Trial is the town of Zeehan. It's a tiny town but has a supermarket, takeaway shop and two 24hr self serve/card only fuel stations.
The Climies Track is about 17kms long. This took us 6.5hrs going at a leisurely pace with lots of quick stops and a few sections needing spotting.
Vehicles were:
td42t GQ on 35" tyres and 3" lift,
4.5lt petrol 100 series on 35" tyres and 4".
Zd30 GU with 33" tyre and 2"
4lt petrol jeep with I think 32" tyres and 2"
3l td Hilux Dual cab on 32" tyres and small lift.
3l td Hilux Dual Cab twin locked on 32" tyres with 2" lift and 1" body lift (the lead car and my ride).
2.8l aftermaket td Hilux flat tray with 35" tyres and big lift.
And the most surprising was a 2018 bt50 dual cab with 2" lift, rock sliders and Stock factory all terrain tyres.
The track has fairly varied terrain considering its short length and that its a coastal track. It's very rocky with some sections being all solid rock. Lots of washed out gravel sections with deep ruts. There's hill sections and creek crossings where wheel placement is key. There's a few bottomless black bog holes and a pretty bad orange clay bog right at the Granville end.
The weather was good on the day. It had rained on the days leading up to the trip so the bogs were full but the ground was mostly dry. We had one brief shower which made the rocks very slick on one hill climb.
All vehicles made it through easily and we only needed to winch and snatch through one particularly bad bog.
Note that there arent many winching options apart from attaching to another vehicle.
From Granville we continued north to the Pieman River Heads. These tracks are sandy with lots of soft dune sand, beach driving, black bogs (which can mostly be driven around) and some rocky rutted hills.
We got into Pieman Heads around 6:30pm.
Climies is an absolutely awesome track. A definite must do. I'd say the requirements are a decently set up 4wd, a good driver, attention to weather and you'd really want at least two vehicles as there's not a lot of winch options.
Pieman Heads from granville is a very beautiful place and a lot easier drive than climies but it's still a very remote place.
