Ben Lomond National Park

Ben Lomond National Park covers a 100 square kilometre plateau sitting about 1,500 metres above sea level in Tasmania's Northern Midlands, with Legges Tor — 1,572 metres, the state's second-highest point — on its highest corner, just above the alpine village and its ski slopes. The rock is Jurassic dolerite, forced up through older slate, siltstone, greywacke and granite and cooled into the columns and cliffs that ring the rim; a small Pleistocene ice cap later ground out the boulder fields and scree now covering much of the surface, and a coal seam under Coalmine Crag was once worked. The park was declared in July 1947 and named for the Scottish mountain by Colonel William Patterson in 1804, while Legges Tor remembers Colonel William Vincent Legge, who measured the crags in 1805–06. What pulls most people up is the road: Jacobs Ladder, a run of hairpins cut into the plateau edge.

This is an Aboriginal cultural landscape: Parks and Wildlife records the plateau as country of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Ben Lomond nation, and asks visitors to stay on formed tracks and leave everything where it lies. Around 220 plant species flower across the top in summer.

What to expect

Reviewed 11 November 2026

You leave Launceston on the C401 through White Hills, turn right at Blessington onto Ben Lomond Road and climb 8 kilometres to the park boundary, then 18 kilometres more to the alpine village — all unsealed, all narrow, with the last stretch being Jacobs Ladder itself: six switchbacks cut into the plateau face, a 30 km/h limit, and a park rule that uphill traffic gives way to vehicles coming down. In snow and ice the road can be closed without notice at the barrier 4.5 kilometres below the village, and from June to September every vehicle must carry correctly fitted snow chains, with anti-freeze recommended in the radiator. You cannot walk up the Jacobs Ladder road — that is banned for safety reasons — so if you want to be on foot, park at the village and take a track. From Launceston the drive is about 1 hour 10 minutes, and the approach rewards slow travel: the valley falls away behind each bend and the dolerite columns come into view as the road tops out.

On top you are on a 100 square kilometre plateau at about 1,500 metres, with Legges Tor (1,572 metres) the highest point in the north-east and the second-highest in Tasmania. Blockfields and scree cover much of the surface, and the cliffs around the rim are columnar dolerite that climbers and abseilers use. Snow, rain, wind and sun can all arrive in a single day up here, in any season.

Tracks start at the main car park at the end of the village road. The Summit Link Track runs 1 kilometre in about 30 minutes at Grade 2, on hardened and compacted surface through alpine vegetation and rock scree toward the steeper Summit Pass Track. For harder ground, Alpine Village to Little Hell covers 5.5 kilometres return over a cross-country ski trail marked by ski poles, with boulder fields to rock-hop and views south to Lake Baker, Lake Youl and Stacks Bluff — Parks grades it 5 and expects navigation and emergency first-aid skills.

Around the alpine village, Bennetts wallabies, wombats and pademelons are common, and the park holds Forester kangaroos (mostly along the south-west edge), potoroos, eastern quolls, echidnas and platypus on the lower slopes. Up on the forested margins you can hear wedge-tailed eagles, yellow-tailed black cockatoos, honeyeaters and pardalotes, and on warm days blotched blue-tongued lizards work the gravel beside the road. Around 220 plant species grow in the park, and in summer the heath across the top carries its alpine wildflowers — daisies and low cushion plants among the rocks. Wildlife is most active at dawn and dusk, which is exactly when the road is least pleasant to share with it, so Parks asks visitors to avoid driving in the reserves at night and to slow down for animals. Keep food secure, feed nothing, and stay on the formed tracks — alpine heath and soil recover slowly from a single footpad.

Take the weather seriously. Parks is blunt about it: alpine conditions change very quickly and people have died on Tasmanian mountains caught without waterproofs and warm layers. Carry a waterproof jacket with a hood and storm front, over-trousers, a fleece, thermal base layers, a hat and gloves, even in January. Winter temperatures hover around zero and local sources cite lows near minus 10°C, with July averaging 11°C by day; the snow season runs from about mid-June to the end of September, with the downhill runs usually operating from early July to late September.