Near the turnoff to Ben Lomond about 50kms out of Launceston the 'please refuel' alert sounded. "Hmmm, we've got only 40kms range - where's the nearest fuel station?" I asked Damien. "There's none for miles" came the reply that I didn't want to hear. What to do, what to do? Turn back or head for the top of the mountain as planned?

We decided we might as well continue upwards and hopefully we could buy some diesel from the inn at the Ben Lomond Village.

Somewhat tentatively I drove up the spectacular winding switchbacks of Jacobs Ladder: (range 20kms!) and pulled in to the village. Alas the inn was closed.

Spotting a bunch of cars up at the Northern Tasmanian Alpine Club lodge Damien and I set off to try our luck there. And what luck we had! It was the club's annual weekend working bee and we explained our plight to club stalwart Wayne Chilcott while his head was up the manhole. "Ah you should know better than to come on a trip up here without enough fuel" he scolded me good naturedly. "Let's go and look in the tank and see if we didn't use it all last night on the heating". He pumped half a jerry can full, more than enough to get us back to civilisation and when we returned the jerry can (with a little donation) Wayne invited us to come back and stay at the lodge during the ski season. We had a look around and the facilities looked pretty impressive - we're definitely going to do it.

Safe in the knowledge we weren't going to be stranded on the mountain, Damien and I set off on our Ben Lomond hike that we'd decided would be the perfect way to spend such a still and blue day.

It was my first trip to Ben Lomond. I look out the window at this mountain pretty much every day and can't figure out why it has taken so long for me to get around to checking it out. Maybe I've taken it for granted because it's so close to home - just an hour away? Maybe it is forever competing for attention with the more renowned hikes in the world heritage listed national parks to the west of us like the Walls of Jerusalem and Cradle Mountain? Whatever the reason, today was the day to remedy the situation.

We set off from the car park and followed one of the village's t-bar lifts uphill. There's 7 lifts on Ben Lomond and it looked like a fun place to bring the girls to learn to ski. We agreed that we would come up for a day's skiing as soon as there's enough snow on the ground.

Beyond the range of the lifts the Ben Lomond National Park stretched out before us. The landscape, a massive undulating expanse of brown rocky dolerite softened by alpine heath, lichen and cushion plants, was dotted with tiny frozen tarns and iced up streams and waterfalls. Ice cascaded down where just weeks ago water would have flowed. It was a real surprise to see ice up on the mountain in May and we explored it, testing out many a small (and shallow) ice sheet to see if it would hold our weight or crack. Some held, some broke up. Some were slippery and smooth enough to try some pretend ice skating on (yes in hiking boots!)

We found a sheltered spot with a view towards the Great Western Tiers and as we made our soup and hot chocolate on the Trangia we talked about how sometimes a mistake (like not filling the car before heading for a remote mountain region) leads to something wonderful (like discovering that we can stay and ski at the Alpine Club's ski lodge in winter). Don't worry though, the lesson has been well and truly learned - we will fuel up in future! But had we not had that little drama we would not have boldly wandered in to the lodge, met the hospitable club members and formed the connections that we did.

When we set out from the village on our hike at about 2pm it was 7 degrees. By the time we finished our late lunch on our rock around 3.30pm it was nearly freezing - maybe 3 degrees. It makes you realise how extreme the environment is up in the mountains. We were at 1450m ASL and the breeze picked up as the sunlight started to fade.

We rugged up and continued our loop back to the village, walking back over a more exposed section of dolerite. There were many areas where we walked over hexagonal shaped clusters of rock (like walking on the back of a massive tortoise). They are similar to the massively tall dolerite pinnacles which stand sentry as you rise up on to the plateau at the top of Ben Lomond. In fact we were walking over the top of these same massive columns that just haven't had the surrounding earth eroded away yet. Cool huh!

Hiking on Ben Lomond with Damien when he has the camera out of the bag is quite like hiking with a toddler. You don't manage to cover much ground, because there are so many spectacular photo opportunities. So we agreed that we just have to go back again to explore further afield - we'll go back to hike, and we'll go back after it snows to ski. There's just so much up there and it's only an hour from our front door!