Rachel Grindlay

I organised a weekend trip in the Kanangra-Boyd Wilderness with SBW. I had a lot of takers, probably because it was a Q (Qualifying) walk for Prospective Members of the club. Despite being full weeks in advance there were a number of pull-outs (including Tom – now blacklisted!) so in the end there were 6 in the group which was a good number.

Our route took us from Kanangra Walls Lookout out to the plateau. We had made very good time initially and had an early (9am) morning tea at Cottage Rock.

We had a second morning tea at the Roots Ridge turn-off before continuing down Gingra Range. A slight navigational error on Fourth Top gave the group an extra 120m of ascent/descent, for which they were highly grateful, before we had lunch on the ridge between Fourth and Fifth Top. After lunch we descended to the Kowmung River where we filled up on water for the rest of the trip.

With considerably heavier packs the last couple of hours were a 650m slog up Willa Spur. We made camp in a nice cave just on 5pm. Wagyu biltong was the highlight of happy hour (Tom wished he’d come along after I told him about that). I threatened no one was allowed to go to bed before 7:30pm and despite the solid day in the legs we all made it through till 9pm!

The first task of the morning was ascending Compagnoni Pass. It would have been a much simpler ascent if the rock wasn’t covered in Casuarina needles.

From there we traversed Ti Willa Plateau before having morning tea on Cloudmaker.

From Cloudmaker we were in well-trodden territory and it was straight-forward, if undulating, walking for the rest of the day.

We made it back to the cars at 3:15pm. An excellent weekend in beautiful country.

After our walking and paddling in Katherine Gorge we had a couple of days off before we joined our SBW group in Darwin. We spent a very enjoyable day at Umbrawarra Gorge – lots of rock-hopping down a gorge which just kept getting deeper and deeper.

Tom didn’t believe me that we might get wet but there were some compulsory wades – no great hardship when it’s over 30°C.

Back in Darwin we met up with the other 9 people in our group and hopped in a mini-bus which dropped us off at Maguk (Barramundi Gorge). We had a short walk before we made camp. The real walking started on day 2. Disaster almost immediately as we managed to become separated from 2 members of group within 20 minutes of leaving camp! Many ‘day-o’s’ later we were reunited and actually on our way. Much of the first day was on a fairly well-formed (but unmarked) track.

We had a delightful lunch at the “Jade Pool” before spending most of the afternoon at Picaninny Pools.

I’m not sure what possessed me but I did a 6m jump – but I wasn’t standing at the top waiting for the photographers to get in position – I was either going straight away or not at all!

Day 3 we left Barramundi Creek and headed across to Gronophyllum Creek.

There were many beautiful waterholes on this creek but we pushed past many of them to have a late morning tea at the “Lap Pool”. [Though it seemed there were multiple “Lap Pools” depending on who you spoke to]

More swims in crystal-clear water before lunch at another delightful pool. We camped earlier than intended as progress had not been as fast we would have liked.

Day 4 we intended to get going early so were up well before dawn. One of the party had taken some heavy falls the previous day and wasn’t faring too well. We waited for a helicopter to take him out. Subsequently we started walking a fair bit later than planned. Eventually we were on our way down Gronophyllum Creek before crossing over the flood plains (very quickly as they had been burnt) to the exquisite Cascade Creek. Up until this point I’d been a bit ho-hum about the trip. I felt that the creeks we’d walked through in the Kimberley were as good, if not better, than what we’d been passing.

Cascade Creek is spectacular. Unfortunately as we were trying to make up time from the previous day we couldn’t spend too long here – only 2 hours to enjoy the many jumps, water slide and beautiful pools.

Mid-afternoon we reluctantly headed upstream through an attractive gorge with lots of rock-hopping.

Again we camped earlier than intended as it was getting late in the day and we were still over an hour from our planned campsite. Our spontaneous campsite was attractive but a little slopey.

We had an early start on day 5 to to continue making up lost time from the previous two days. The party split – 3 of us continued up the gorge, with an expected compulsory swim (pack float), while the remainder headed cross-country to cut off a bend. With some judicious scrambling we managed to avoid swimming but subsequently missed some art work which we were looking for ‘after the packfloat’.

Patsy got through all the tricky sections only to slip on the last climb-down and took a full dunking (with a non waterproofed pack!). The others had beaten us to the rendezvous point by a few minutes, where they were ‘camelling up’ for the cross-country trek to come. The first 8km or so was easy walking through burnt or low vegetated country. I was feeling confident we’d get into camp in the early afternoon which would be a nice change from the previous few days. We had a dry lunch at 1pm and then continued on. The country got more difficult, progress slowed in a tangle of small tributaries and head-high spear grass. It was after 4pm when we finally found ourselves at the top of the (dry) waterfall we were planning to camp at. There wasn’t a lot of water at the top but a large pool at the bottom. Peter and I headed down to check out the camping options – I was relieved to find an acceptable flat campsite next to the pool. It was a long, tough day with no swims so we were happy to get into camp and have a wash.

Day 6 surely had to provide some relief. This wasn’t the trip I was expecting!? Where were the early arrivals at camp, followed by multiple cups of tea, swims and general relaxation for the afternoon?

Fortunately we made good time in pretty easy walking country and were at a lovely campsite by 1:30pm. Everyone enjoyed the chance to chill out after some pretty long days.

Day 7 started with a short walk to the start of Koolpin Gorge (Jarrangbarnmi).

Once in the gorge some of us opted to pack float where we could while others boulder-hopped. Some people’s packs were more waterproof than others…  fortunately a leisurely lunch break provided time to dry out wet sleeping bags.

Our last camp was on the flood plains so we savoured the final swim above the last waterfall before making camp in the late afternoon.

The last day we only had 5km to get to Flying Fox Crossing on the South Alligator River where the mini-bus would pick us up. It was good walking and we made it with half an hour to spare. From there it was what felt like a long drive back to Darwin. The trip finished with the buffet at Seafood on Cullen taking in the sunset over the water.

 

Continued from Part I

The falls were spectacular and we were relieved to know the hardest 2 days of the trip where out of the way.

Ro had ensured happy hour was good on night 6 with a 2L cask of wine in the food drop. That had been her main concern when the bag had rolled off the boulder – did the wine stay intact? It had, the main complaint seemed to be “where was the second cask?”.

Unusually there had been a bit of cloud around on day 6 & 7. This provided a magnificent sunrise on day 7.

The morning of day 7 we had a few things missing. Apparently there’s a quoll out there that likes gingernuts, women’s knickers and steel wool.

Mike came up with an excellent plan of doing a one-night trip up the creek and then returning to the top of the falls the following day. This meant we could leave a lot of our food behind and avoid heavy packs for a couple of days. The food bags were re-hung (in a more accessible tree) and we headed upstream.

With a fairly short day ahead we had a leisurely morning tea with lots of jumping by Mike and Tom at a great waterhole.

Our camp on night 7 was our most intimate of the trip. It was at a wonderful waterhole, almost the definition of serenity (other than when Tom was jumping in!).

We explored a bit of the nearby country that afternoon.

On day 8 we headed back downstream following a slight different route.

We camped in a different spot above the falls on night 8 as the spot we’d chosen on night 6 had been a bit of a wind tunnel. The weather which had been quite cool up until night 6 started to warm up so we had a much more pleasant night second time round.

On day 9 we descended below the falls – via a side creek a couple of kilometres downstream. We got some great views of the falls on our way out.

We did a day trip upstream to below the falls in the afternoon. There was some good rock art along the way.

On day 10 most of us did a day trip downstream to see how far we could get before we would have to swim. The section below was the only time we got wet until the final canal.

The final canal where swimming was your only option stopped us. We had morning tea and a swim. Tom swam part way down the canal and then climbed up the wall and did a jump (if you look carefully you can see his silhouette in the photo below).

Our final day of walking we exited up the side-creek we’d come down on day 9 and then across into another side-creek which cam back to Garimbu Creek below the canal we’d walked down to on day 10. It wasn’t the most pleasant terrain and the temperature seemed to be up a few degrees on previous days. We were all losing the will to walk by the time we got to camp.

Our final day we just walked back upstream 100m or so and waited for the chopper to arrive. We were taken back to Mitchell Plateau airstrip, and then a flight back to Kununurra.

Back in Kununurra we had a lovely dinner at The Pumphouse, and later that night (with much help from google) we finally finished the crossword we’d been battling with all trip!

An another excellent Kimberley trip. Many thanks for Mike for leading, particularly after Ro left us prematurely on day 4, and to everyone for their excellent company.

Getting to The Kimberley region of Australia is a logistics challenge in itself. For Sydney-siders like us, it generally involves flying to Darwin (having to overnight there due to the flight schedules), flying to Kununurra (maybe having to overnight again) and then some other transport to wherever you’re walking. This year’s trip was in the Prince Regent National Park, west of Mitchell Plateau. Once we finally got to Kununurra the adventure started with a 1.5hr flight from Kununurra to the Mitchell Plateau Airstrip.

We got great views of the region on the way.

From the Mitchell Plateau Airstrip we were then transported by helicopter into the Roe River, via a food drop on Garimbu Creek. We were planning to be out for 12 days/11 nights with us due to get to the food drop on night 6.

We didn’t have far to walk on the first day! In fact we were camping where the chopper dropped us off, which was nice given our packs were full of 6 days of food.

Day 2 we started walking down the Roe River.

We didn’t get far before we hit these major falls which were a great spot for morning tea and a swim.

That afternoon we visited the original “Bradshaw” art works.

And then we settled down to camp on night 2. The weather was a lot cooler than we were expecting and most of us were cold on the first few nights.

Day 3 saw us go cross-country to cut off a couple of loops on the Roe. Unfortunately we saw quite a few cows, including some herds. In theory DPAW does some culling but from the numbers we saw it’s not that effective.

Lunch was had at this lovely set of falls.

There were lots of pot-holes around. This one fitted Tom in it!

That afternoon there was generally easy walking down the river.

We found some lovely shady overhangs, which unsurprisingly had rock art in them.

And we had a delightful spot to camp for night 3.

Day 4 we continued down the Roe River. The rocky slabs gave way to more sandy country. It was fairly easy going but not particularly exciting. Tom & I went on a detour up Wyulda Creek where we found some lovely waterholes and had a swim.

Expecting to find the rest of the party at camp we were surprised when they flagged us down only a short distance from the Wyulda Ck/Roe River junction. Unfortunately one of our group had broken her wrist and the decision had been made to activate one of the PLBs. A chopper picked her up within 90 minutes of the PLB being activated. And so then there were 7…

Subsequently we got to our intended camp later than planned. We were a little surprised when the creek we intended to follow cross-country the next day was a very small, dry channel. Tom & I headed up it to see what was going on and found the larger creek (with some water in it) actually joined the Roe 500m downstream rather than what was shown on the map.

We had groups dinners on the trip. Each evening’s food was allocated to one person to prepare (everyone doing 1.5 nights over the trip). Night 4 was Melissah’s night and we had a delicious laksa, followed by damper which we filled with honey for dessert.

Day 5 we left the Roe to start our cross-country route to Garimbu Creek. DPAW had been burning in the park in May and when we encountered those sections the walking was a lot faster.

Where vegetation hadn’t been burnt then things were slower as you normally couldn’t see where you were putting your feet so a lot of concentration was required.

We’d had an early start on day 5 as we were going across the tops on what could have been a long day. The going was reasonable, but we’d been looking for a campsite for a while with no options coming up. We were pinning our hopes on a permanent waterhole marked on the creek we were descending. When we arrived at the waterhole it wasn’t quite the picturesque camp we were hoping for. Having been walking for over 8 hours we weren’t keen to walk much further. It wasn’t too bad; there was some sand we could flatten out to sleep on and the water was ok if you cleared the scum off the surface….

I had a bit more energy left then most of party so I decided to push on another hundred metres. To my joy and amazement what had been an exclusively bouldery/rocky creek, with little surface water, suddenly gave way to large rock slabs with running water and even some waterholes big enough to swim in! Amazing. Everyone was pretty happy.

Day 6 we didn’t have much distance to cover but we were expecting difficult terrain. The terrain didn’t disappoint, we spent 5 hours covering 5km (including breaks). The worst of it in ‘tiger country’ where we were going about 0.5km/hour through deep spinifex and boulders. We were pretty happy when we got to Garimbu Creek and our food drop. When the food drop had been hung in the trees at the start of the trip one of the bags had rolled off a boulder and got a couple of tears in it. We were a bit concerned that this may have made it vulnerable to animals, but while there had been some gnawing the animal seemed to have mainly had a penchant for plastic bags. The only food casualty was a twiggy stick (salami).

go to part 2

I wanted to put a trip on our bushwalking club’s program and I was searching for inspiration when I stumbled across Tom’s list of ‘future walks he’d like to do’. Russells Needle was on it and from there I had the seed for my trip planning. I’d read a couple of trip reports about sketchy ascents of Russells Needle but I figured it was an out and back so if things got beyond people’s comfort level they could just stop! Planning a route out Rocky Waterholes Creek seemed the obvious choice to avoid backtracking. I found a few more sketchy trip reports of people trying to go up Rocky Waterholes Creek so it seemed like a great adventurous option. And thus it went on the program – all pretty unknown.

In the two weeks leading up to my trip I received quite a bit of information regarding the ascent of Russells Needle and also exits out of Rocky Waterholes Creek. While it is great to have information suddenly it didn’t seem like so much of an adventure!

Saturday morning arrived and 7 of us set out from the Wattle Ridge Carpark. With another bushwalking group also setting out at the same time we had to use overflow parking spaces. The weather was beautiful for walking and it wasn’t long before we were dropping packs at the track junction with Slott Way and the Ahearn Lookout track. We took the opportunity for a side trip to Ahearn Lookout so everyone could get expansive views of the Nattai Valley, and particularly our target for the day – Russells Needle. Russells Needle is an unusual sandstone spine which sticks out into the Nattai Valley, a knife-edge ridge separated from the main cliffline by a deep saddle.

Back to our packs we made quick time down Slott Way which was (too?) well marked with pink/yellow tape and blue metal markers on what felt like every second tree.

The Nattai is still fairly easy going after the floods which scoured it out in mid-2016. Lunch and our campsite was a large sandy bank on the Nattai not far downstream from Needle Creek. After lunch we set off with day packs to ascend Russells Needle. Prickly bushes (blackthorn?) made the initial slopes unpleasant and of course the group were constantly advising the leader that ‘the ridge over there looks nice and clear’ (they were ignored). Once we’d broken through that we were soon skirting the upper cliff line. It took a while to reach a break in the cliffline, which looked easy, though turned out to be a little less so. The rope was deployed for those that wanted it. This brought us on to the knife-edge ridge.

Now we were almost at the real deal – we picked our way up the rocky spine until we got just below the summit. Soon the majority of the party were standing on the summit plateau.

Some were more comfortable with the considerable exposure – Matthew lounged on the true summit rock for quite some time. After a decent period taking in the views and giving everyone who wanted to the opportunity to get to the true summit we started heading down. It was only then that I discovered the easy (unexposed) route up to the summit rather than the more exposed route we’d taken up the boulder.

On the descent we took the ‘clear ridge’ that everyone wanted to be on during the ascent. I’m pleased to report it was just as full of blackthorn… Back to camp around 4:30pm, after picking up water from Needle Creek, we settled in for a pleasant happy hour and evening around the camp fire.

Sunday always had the most unknowns – not least what the weather was going to do. The forecast during the week had oscillated between 0-3mm to 5-10mm almost daily. The most recent forecast was fortunately back to 0-3mm and Sunday dawned clear which was a good sign.

Away from camp at 8:30am we walked down the Nattai a few hundred metres before crossing over to Rocky Waterholes Creek.

Similar to the Nattai there was significant flooding impact so the going was reasonable – as reasonable as it can be when you’re boulder hopping and scrambling. The creek varied between large boulders which were a full body work out to get around, flatter sections with beautiful pools (though only Matthew was keen to swim!), and some delightful cascades over rocky slabs. The clouds started building but other than a few drops at lunch we were spared, which was fortunate as some sections of the creek were slippery enough without extra moisture from above.

Shortly after lunch we hit the side creek at 625986 that we hoped to ascend. Alan had kindly scouted it for us during lunch and was able to confirm we could get up. I’m always a bit concerned about whether Alan’s routes will work for the whole party but he assured me he did it with his “Melinda hat” on. We scrambled up the true-left of the creek around a number of waterfalls and then bashed up from the true right to one of the many fire-trails that exist on the ridges in the area.

Those that were keen headed down the firetrail to the skinny ridge which pokes out into Rocky Waterholes Creek, giving spectacular views of where we’d spent most of the day.

From there it was just an easy walk following firetrails and a track skirting the Wattle Ridge property. We arrived back at the cars at 4:30pm – no sign of an epic! An excellent weekend of adventuring in a lesser visited part of the world.

Emmanuelle had a walk on the club program which was to an area I didn’t know anything about. It was great to get out to a different part of the world. It was a beautiful walk.

 

After visiting the Four Heads of Asgard Plateau a couple of months earlier for Nicole’s fondue weekend I decided it would be a good walk to add to the SBW program. We had explored the various heads over a couple of days, but I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to work out where I was going on a day walk.

The walk proved a popular one on the program and I had to turn away quite a few people once I hit my (self-imposed) cap of 12. On the day we had 11 and despite the forecast predicting a cloudy, cool day it was pretty warm and humid.

After deciding to put the Four Heads on the program I wanted to run another trip nearby on the Sunday. After scouring the map and having a look at some of the trips in Micheal Keats & Brian Fox’s Upper Grose Valley book I decided the weekend would only be complete with a visit to Odin Head (the fifth head) on the Sunday. Odin Head can be accessed by an easy, relatively flat walk along an old fire trail and would likely be less than an hour and a half return. I needed something more! Instead I decided to descend into Victoria Brook and follow that to Victoria Creek before ultimately ascending the cliffs below Odin Head. Perhaps unsurprisingly I had a lot less interest in my Sunday walk, perhaps because of the 3 for Terrain in the grade (for the non-SBW readers that means “Sections of rough track and/or off track and/or creek crossing and/or rock scrambling for long periods and/or thick scrub“).

In the end we had 6 starters for Sunday. After a brief jaunt along the road we soon plunged off track and down into Victoria Brook.

It wasn’t long before we gave up on keeping our feet dry. At one point Tom declared the water was only up to mid-thigh, unfortunately for most of the party this meant closer to waist deep. In a couple of places we elected to go up and around rather than go through where the water was deeper – sadly this meant missing the most canyon-like sections.

Progress was fairly slow and we had a late lunch a few hundred metres before we hit the junction with Victoria Creek. The original plan had been to continue down Victoria Creek for another km or two but in the interests of time we decided to try our luck getting through the cliff line above the junction. The climb up to the cliff line was straightforward but the traverse along until we found a break was less pleasant. Fortunately we managed to make it up a steep muddy pass and soon were on the ridge having a mandatory shoe clean out.

The party were suspicious about whether there was even going to be a lookout at Odin Head as I led them out on what was now an out and back instead of a glorious ascent at the head itself. I assured them that all information I had led me to believe there would be a lookout… but it was definitely a relief to get to the cliff edge and views of the Grose Valley. We spent a while enjoying the views before heading back along the old fire trails to the cars, getting back just after 5pm. A solid day in the bush.

A long weekend is always a highlight on a bushwalker’s calendar – the opportunity to get to places which are prohibitive for a normal weekend. Tom and I tossed up various options and finally settled on the Blue Breaks with an extra day of leave to make the long drive to Yerranderie worthwhile.

After my only other trip to Yerranderie I had no desire to do the drive again but the road was in good condition and nowhere near as bad as I remembered. The first major decision of the trip was whether to run it on pre or post daylight savings times. After considerable discussion we agreed to move to Daylight Savings Time as of Friday morning and so OTT (Official Trip Time) was set on all time-keeping pieces before we set off. This meant we had a very late start of 11am! The first couple of hours we followed an old fire trail down to the Tonalli River where we had morning tea around midday OTT. Time for those not familiar with Alex’s twig stove to have their first experience with it – much amusement for all along with the requisite plumes of smoke.

From the river we followed the remains of another fire trail, though this one was full of kangaroo thorn.

It was quite windy so we opted for lunch in the saddle between Tonalli Pass/Lacys Gap and the detached section on the end. During our post-lunch exploration of the detached section no one could be tempted to make the jump across to the final detached block.

From there the walk to our camp was straight-forward and we were glad our camp cave was out of the howling wind. We visited Terni Head and enjoyed the views.

Somewhat optimistically we headed up to the cliffs for happy hour but once on them we concluded we’d enjoy the views for a few minutes and then retreat out of the wind to eat. Amusement was had throwing things into the wind and watching them sail back over our heads – until Alex started throwing large branches that didn’t go over us…

After a relatively leisurely start the next morning we set off along Lacys Tableland. The topography of the plateau means that most of the walking is inland away from the cliff edge and views. The walking wasn’t particularly quick as it was quite scrubby though thankfully we had left the kangaroo thorn behind after ascending the pass. It was another overcast, windy day but the cloud cleared occasionally to give us a bit of sun.

A squally shower came over as we were starting lunch so we retreated to an overhang. Alex was looking for a visitors book when he spotted an unusual pile of rocks stuck into a hole and behind them was a sealed glass bottle full of notes. It looked like some sort of time capsule project, it said the jar was placed in 2003, we left it as we found it.

A small canyon on the plateau provided post-lunch exploration and we checked out quite a few overhangs in the creek before continuing north.

A flat spot not far from our intended pass was camp for the night. Fortunately we found water in the nearest side creek – though I’m not sure that you would rely on it being there if winter hadn’t been so wet.

We managed to survive happy hour on the cliff edge without getting blown away. The wind was still blowing strongly but Tom had, much to Alex’s disgust, checked the weather forecast on his phone and he assured us that the wind was scheduled to die down about 10pm (not OTT).

The next morning dawned clear and still – a pleasant change from the overcast windy conditions of the previous two days. We almost made an 8am start – somewhat apprehensive of what was to come after some scouting of our intended pass by Toni, Smiffy and Alex the previous evening.

The gully was healthily vegetated but we managed to follow some pig (?) tracks initially, and avoid the head-high nettles. The promised lawyer vine was fairly sparse but nonetheless we were glad for a break from the vegetation under a strangler fig. From there the vegetation changed to more traditional ridge scrub and we headed down. Our intention was to navigate across a number of ridges & gullies to avoid spending too much time in Green Wattle Creek. Our initial foray put us into fairly impenetrable scrub so we headed further down the ridge. This meant the gullies were deeper and more effort to cross; at our last one faced with a bluff we decided we’d take our chances with the creek. Relieved to reach the creek after 3 hours of fairly hard slog we sunk into the ground where we could… until Smiffy realised he’d put his pack on a jumping jack nest.

Moving again up the creek we wished we’d walked upstream a few hundred metres before taking morning tea as there were some pleasant rocky slabs but with still a lot of hard territory to get through there was no time to enjoy them. The merciless leader pressed the group on past pools that may have just been deep enough for a swim much to Alex’s disappointment. After what seemed like an age we reached the bend of Green Wattle Creek where we intended to leave it. Lunch was had and we guzzled water knowing we wouldn’t have easy access to it again for a few hours. We were so happy to find the ridge had normal levels of vegetation!

The climb seemed to go on forever – probably contributed to by some optimistic map reading and the warm, still day. Eventually we all made it to the top of Broken Rock Range. We had a break to recover and take in the views before we set off on our traverse. The walking was lovely and the views excellent. We enjoyed afternoon tea near the high point of the ridge. We debated whether the ‘broken rock’ marked on the map actually existed – once in the vicinity we couldn’t see anything resembling the map feature.

Then it was a steep descent and some tricky navigation to try and pick up the southern spur. Alex’s disappointment with the party continued when it was revealed one party member used a GPS for navigation!!! The GPS showed we were on the spur next to the one we had hoped for but it didn’t really matter so we continued to descend. Amazingly the tributary we descended into was flat and grassy and we made quick time down it to the junction with Green Wattle Creek.

Toni & Alex had generously given the leader an extra 15 minutes before it was happy hour because we’d started 15 minutes after the designated departure time in the morning. The leader delivered deciding on a campsite just before 6:15pm (OTT). Though with firewood collection, setting up camp and general faffing it was closer to the 7pm before we settled down for some very well deserved happy hour around the fire. At this point Nicole pulled 4 oranges out of her bag – which we will all more than happy to eat though very glad we hadn’t been carrying them. Nicole’s happy hour part 2 was after dinner where she whipped up a cake batter (complete with an egg that she’d managed to carry without breaking for 3 days) that then was poured into the orange skins and baked in the fire. Amazing!

Given we hadn’t made it to the planned campsite for the day we knew day 4 could be long. Just over a km of Green Wattle Creek took us more than an hour in very thick scrub. We were glad we hadn’t decided to push on the night before! We filled up water at the junction of Butchers Shop Creek and Green Wattle Creek, de-leeched and started up the ridge to Vengeance Peninsula. The sun was out though the wind was back – the views from Vengeance Peninsula were outstanding.

Tom & I had been somewhat apprehensive about the “thin bit” especially given the wind – fortunately it was nowhere near as exposed/difficult as we’d been anticipating with only the one exposed downclimb. We stayed there a while taking lots of photos. Alex took the direct scrambling route up the nose with the rest of us opting for the easier route to the left.

We had been aiming for lunch on Axehead Mountain but Alex’s protests on Bull Island were heeded given it was 1pm. The twig stove was in action again! Smiffy lost his hat over the edge in the wind, but fortunately was able to retrieve it.

We were supposedly in familiar territory for most of the party now – with Smiffy & Toni having done this section on a trip in 2013 and Rachel & Tom had traversed the Axeheads from the north in 2011. Our collective memories were not particularly helpful as we had to do a bit of route finding.

A brown snake was keenly photographed. The wind was continuing to pick up and by the time we got to Gander Head it was a struggle to stand up in it. Not a time to linger on the tops. We soon found the route down and had a short afternoon tea when we got to the fire trail. Then it was just a few km of along the fire trail. Despite most of the party’s aversion to fire trail walking it was quite pleasant after the amount of scrub bashing we’d done in the previous 4 days.

Back at the cars just before 6pm, a quick change and then the start of a long drive home.

I think anyone who is vaguely interested in bushwalking in NSW has heard of the Six Foot Track. It is an iconic walk and when I started bushwalking back in 2004 I wanted to walk it. Tom talked me out of the idea, telling me it was predominantly fire trail and I would find it boring.

Some time later I heard you could mountain bike it. “Perfect”, I thought. “That wouldn’t be boring”. Then we walked the section between Megalong Valley Rd and Coxs River – I couldn’t mountain bike that! I’d spend most of the time carrying my bike, so that was the end of that idea.

Then we joined Sydney Bush Walkers and I heard about the annual Six Foot Track in a day walk. Great! I could walk the track without getting bored.

In 2013 I was doing Oxfam Trailwalker. “Perfect”, I thought, “it’ll be a great training walk”. But they were scheduled for the same weekend so that was the end of that idea. In 2014 we were inconveniently swanning around the Dolomites. And in 2015 I had signed up but then had to withdraw as the try-outs for the Australian Women’s Ultimate Frisbee team were the same weekend. Drat.

Finally, we get to 2016, surely I can knock it off! Yet I had done very little walking in 2016 as I had been training for the World Ultimate Frisbee Championships that were held in June. Returning from the World Champs I threw myself into a few training walks to try and get some walking endurance fitness. I was filled with apprehension that the day approached.  I was pretty sure I’d make it but I didn’t think my body was going to be very happy with me by the end. I spent a lot of time thinking about nutrition and not really being sure if I had the right food plan. I photocopied the many sections of different maps so I had the route identified.

 

The day finally dawned… well actually I was up well before it dawned as we were meeting at the Explorers Tree at 6am. It hadn’t occurred to me that it was still going to be dark. I had my torch ready in case of a late finish, not because we were up before the sun! There were 25 walkers this year, along with 7 support crew. It was a little like herding cats with everyone milling about in the dark, trying to work out which car to put their bag in and what layers to have on to start walking. After a briefing by Robert and the traditional round of names (though I doubt anyone was going to remember 31 names, especially given it was dark!) we were off by 6:15am. The group spread out fairly quickly with the descent down Nellies Glen.

It wasn’t long before we were all together again at our first support stop at the Megalong Valley Road enjoying a cup of tea or coffee.

The next section through to our morning tea stop (unsupported) at the Coxs River Campground was one of the most picturesque.

It was a beautiful day, perfect walking weather and the time passed quickly until we got to Bowtells Bridge. As the Coxs River was flowing strongly from a lot of rain in the preceding weeks we were crossing using the bridge. Only one person can use the bridge at the time, so there was a small wait as we got everyone across.

Leaving our morning tea (270m) spot at 9:55am we set off on the fire trail up to Mini Mini Saddle (730m), then down to Little River (550m), before another big ascent to the Pluviometer on the Black Range (980m).

I’d been vaguely thinking if this walk went well I would try K2K in a day so I used the ascent to push myself. This meant I was third to the top at 11:50am and soon tucking into more coffee from our wonderful support team and inhaling lunch.

I’d not eaten (or drunk!) much so far on the walk so it was good to get some food in. It was not great to see there was only about 0.5litres of my 2l bladder gone. I made myself drink half a litre of water before I could start the next section. As I’d got to the Pluviometer earlier than many people I was ready to set off before most. I was hoping some others might join me but I was the keenest so off I went.

The fire trail along the Black Range passed quickly. I enjoyed using my map and compass to work out which bend I was on and estimating the time it would take to get to various landmarks. The support crew drove past me just as I got to the 15km to go marker.

It was good to know I was two-thirds of the way there and my body was feeling good. I got a bit of shuffle on in some of the downhill sections and before I knew it I was at the Black Range Campground at 1:50pm. My fluid intake hadn’t improved so I gladly downed a couple of glasses of orange juice from the support crew. The temperature had plunged and it was quite chilly sitting round and stretching at the rest stop. I needed to either put a bunch more clothes on or get walking again. I decided on the latter.

I’d been told it was all downhill in the final section so it was a rude surprise to find a couple of short, sharp uphill sections but at least I warmed up pretty quickly! I was also pleased to find that the 4km from the Black Range Campground didn’t parallel the main road – which is what the NPA notes had implied. I had a brief chat with a couple who had been playing the ukulele and singing at our rest stop before passing them. I was now on a mission to get to the end.

Apparently in previous years some of the group would run this section so I tried to jog where the terrain allowed. Not so fast that I didn’t see this lovely echidna on the side of the track.

The fire trail turned quite rocky near the turnoff to Mt George and I couldn’t safely run, but further on the foot track turned to smaller gravel and I was able to jog again. Not having done the route before I was surprised and impressed when I got to Carlotta Arch. I started meeting tourists walking up from Jenolan Caves. I must have looked like a bit of mad woman with my map around my neck, holding my walking poles, jogging down the hill. It was 3:40pm when I stepped into the reception at Caves House feeling pretty good… so that means I might have to contemplate K2K in three weeks time. The other walkers arrived over the next hour or so all pleased to have made it.

 

Having now done the Six Foot Track after so many years of contemplating it I can say it was far more enjoyable that I was expecting it to be. Yes, there is a lot of fire trail but it is pleasant surrounds and nice views. It was a great day, big thanks to Robert Carter for organising everything and to our support crew for making sure we were well looked after.