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...
In a hammock, the best way of keeping your underside warm is a down quilt suspended underneath in such a way that it snugs up against you. I finally got around to making a new one; my third. The one I’ve been using for the last couple of years has given me a few nights on the edge of being too cold, and for the last six months I’ve had a box full of nice 850fp goose down sitting on...
26.62km +793m -1085 The climb from Orroral valley to the Orroral ridge can best be described as ‘400 vertical meters of fucking bullshit’. And then the road winds down to Honeysuckle Creek tracking station. It’s a beautiful shaded campground, with only 16km left to the visitors centre Past Booroomba rocks, and Mt Tennent comes into view. Down through the thick regrowth to Bushfold flats. I walked...
31.96km +1058m -1343m Another cold morning. Eagle eyed readers may notice a pattern emerging. The gear I brought is proving to be just enough to keep me comfortable, but only barely. Lesson: do not underestimate overnight temperatures in the Australian alps, even in summer. Even on a short trip. It’s warming up quick, and we’ve got a short sharp climb in our future. Instead of the typical route...
15.4km +286m -318m A little chilly again this morning. We had a cheery little fire to warm up while having breakfast and packing up. We initially headed up the road towards the ruins of Haines hut before cutting across country towards Blue Waterholes. The plain is porous limestone and all the water disappears into the ground, only to pop out again elsewhere. We joined the Nichols Gorge circuit...
25.6km +530m -617m Feeling somewhat refreshed after twelve hours in the hammock. A beautiful, if somewhat misty and damp dawn. It was a nice enough walk along the Port Phillip trail (though I think we’re some distance from Port Phillip) and mosquito creek trail. The weather is perfect for walking. After Ghost Gully campground the trail becomes less open and the forest provides nice shade. Rod had...
16.7km +393m -419m Another cold morning, though not as bad as the one before. I was packed up and twiddling my thumbs while I waited for Rod to get his shit together. The first few kilometres were unremarkable, though the sky was clear and blue and the temperature quickly climbed to a very pleasant mildness. Open plains and rolling hills and the occasional copse of snow gums. It’s a long walk...
25km +545m -793m It was not six degrees last night. I don’t know what it was, but it was frosty in the morning. In light of that, I think I did a decent job of not being especially cold during the night. Having my cold weather quilt might have been nice though. A beautiful dawn, and we were walking by not long after 7. This flat worm looks mighty round. It didn’t take long before we made it back...
