Rachel Grindlay

The weather forecast was looking pretty ugly for Friday night – with the Norwegian forecasters predicting 37mm a few days out – the BOM forecast was a more “reasonable” 6-15mm. It didn’t sound particularly compatible with the exploration of a quartzite creek! After much agonising Plan B was enacted which involved a very late start by SBW standards – 10am! As hoped for the rain had largely blown through by the time we started – we didn’t really get much beyond spitting through the rest of the day.

Day 2 we revelled in the open walking across the Morton tops (whoever thought they would hear that phrase in their lifetime!) before we set off with day packs into a creek system I’d been wanting to explore for a while.

I thought we might by stymied almost as soon as we got into the creek, as there was a drop that needed a handline – at least at the water levels we encountered. Fortunately Tom was able to meat anchor the rest of the party allowing us to use a line with a few footholds, and then he reset off a natural anchor and had a more difficult descent (but he was the tallest in the group by a fair way). I headed down first to make sure we were going to be able to continue on without issue – which we were – other than getting waist deep wet!

For the rest of the creek any time we hit a drop that we couldn’t downclimb easily we were able to walk around the top of the creek and find a straight forward way back in.