Posted by It’s been over 10 years since I last visited Heemskirk Falls, and I confess I almost skipped this visit as the forecast for the day was for heavy rain and I already had a long drive home to Hobart today, but then I figured that I’m this close and have all the gear (eMTB and packraft) with me to do the visit so why not just go today?
That’s how I found myself back at the start of the track, about 17kms outside Zeehan on the Heemskirk road heading out towards Granville Harbour (or about 600 metres past the Heemskirk River) heading back out to these falls in very wet and cold gear from my travels yesterday.
Things have really changed with the huge fire that went through earlier this year with the whole area burnt out. The trail out to Heemskirk falls is also in a lot worst shape with deep ruts starting to form and a lot more deeper puddles than I remembered from last time.
Still, with the advantage of a my eMTB, the ride out at least was pretty easy, even if I did take a wrong turn about 3.5kms in (just before you get to the Heemskirk river) where I took the left fork instead of the right fork and ended up having to backtrack a little bit.
What I hadn’t expected was that the fires had actually burnt out all of the thick forest that used to be on both sides of the Heemskirk River requiring a swim or packraft down the last 400 or so metres to get to the falls.
Wanting to see if I could get down to the falls without having to inflate the packraft, I crossed the little (but tricky) stream that entered the river just downstream and started to head along a bit of a pad heading along the river.
I got about 250 metres downstream before a combination of thick trees and steepening slope led to me deciding to try and walk down the river itself instead. This went well for a short while, but I was soon over my waist, so I opted to climb up onto the other side of the river, which was looking flatter, and from there it turned out to be a relatively easy and open walk the rest of the way to the top of the falls.
Unfortunately the rocks were wet and extremely slippery around the falls, so I found myself needing to be very careful trying to get any pictures and to be honest none of them turned out that great. The one below is from a vantage point just out past the falls, I include it mainly to show the burnt out forest around the top of the falls.
The walk / bike back was pretty much the same way I came in, except as forecast the heavens opened up just as I got back near my bike, so I was very, very wet and muddy by the time I got back to my car.
Not a waterfall I would necessarily recommend to anyone, but still glad I made the effort to visit all these years on.
