Distance: 22.2kmElevation: +193m -361mTime: 6:00Total Distance: 173km What’s brown and sticky? A stick. The thermometer dangling from my pack says the temperature fell to -2° this morning. I vaguely recall somebody saying that black sallees grow on the edge of frost hollows. There was frost. I roused myself from the snuggly warm cocoon of my hammock to go and light a fire in case anybody had...
Distance: 22.8kmElevation: +314m -318mTime: 7:00Total Distance: 151.1km The sky was the colour of Television, tuned to a dead channel. – Neuromancer We set out under a grey sky with the promise of sunshine ahead on our longest day so far. About 22km to Hainsworth hut. The group flies along when given a decent track to walk on, and the first half of the day was this. Good morning, how are you? The...
Distance: 21.78kmElevation: +396m -464mTime: 6:17Total Distance: 128.3km Looks like the storm is passing to both sides and we should be in the clear. – Robyn Another beautiful morning, though the previous night’s rain and the total lack of wind made for a lot of condensation, even in the hammock, which usually resists it owing to the large amount of airflow. Today is resupply day, and our packs...
Distance: 16.5kmElevation: +420m -460mTime: 5:40Total Distance: 106.5km Distant thunder rumble Rumble hungry like the beast Tuplelo bound Nick Cave – Tupelo From Happys Hut’ we cut straight up to the track. With how popular this shortcut is, I felt sure we’d find a footpad, but no such luck. We began seeing the first real sign of horse activity so far, and the flies also became a menace. Leek...
Distance: 17.7kmElevation: +250m -290mTime: 6:15Total Distance: 90km Happiness is mandatory Woke to a hut shrouded in fog. Today will be our last serious bit of off track walking. Scott is nursing a strained leg muscle and has elected to do a road walk instead and meet us at Happys Hut. Blue sky despite a dire forecast The rest of us made our way across button grass to Boobee Hut. The walking...
Distance: 17.6kmElevation: +430m -680mTime: 8:20Total Distance: 72.3km Mary had a little clock She swallowed it one day. She took a dose of epsom salts To pass the time away… A lovely night at a surprisingly good campsite, especially since the wind died down finally. There was dew overnight and I hadn’t bothered to put the tarp up, so I woke up to a damp outer shell on my quilt, but it soon dried...
Distance: 19.7kmElevation: +486m -348mTime: 8hrsTotal Distance: 54.7km Keep rolling, rolling, rolling on (your ankles) A beautiful sunrise to start the day, with my customary coffee from the hammock. As leader, I can choose what time we start walking each day and 8am has been feeling very comfortable. We started with an easy walk on dirt road up to Schlink pass, and then to the hut known...
Distance: 17kmElevation: +474m -794mTime: 7hrsTotal Distance: 35km What do you call one eyed, three legged donkey playing jazz on the piano? A plinky plonky honky tonky winky wonky donkey. The campsite near The Sentinel is really nice and quite well sheltered. The temperature dropped to about 3° overnight and there was some wind, but I was snug in my cocoon. The others slept well too, or whatever...
Distance: 18kmElevation: +810 -430Time: 6:45Total Distance: 18km Gonna get my hands dirty; Nothin good ever came from clean. Tori Forsyth – Black bird Not even smelly yet Here I am again. Walking on the AAWT for the third December in a row. This time I’ve got four others with me from the Canberra Bushwalking Club who were foolish enough to come along. After a quick coffee stop in Jindabyne...
Disclaimer: I have no fucking idea what I’m doing. Copy me at your own risk.Using solar on a hike doesn’t really make sense until you’re about ten days or more between power points. Even then, it’s fiddly. You have to secure it to the top of your pack (not lackadaisically dangling off the back like you see in the marketing images), you need to charge a powerbank...
I made another quilt. This should be the last one for a while. I wanted to improve on the one I made a couple of years ago. That one was filled with down I reclaimed from some older sleeping bags. It has served me well, but I knew I could make one lighter and warmer. I based the design on the previous one, with a sewn footbox and more width around the torso than around the legs. I’ve been...
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a conversion to kilometres.” — Anon In the month or so that it took for me to recover from hiking the Australian Alps Walking Track, two things came to me. The first was the rapid return of all the weight I’d lost. The second was the realisation that I wanted to do something like that again. I considered a lot of possible walks, from WA’s...
