Month: April 2018

Hello!
Success – I mostly rested today and also got through Day Three’s photos.
However… I am still tired and ‘blah’ and ready for bed way too early so just popping in fleetingly to say hi!

Day three was pretty fantastic actually… a long one – nearly 17km with lots of changing terrain, a bit of ‘up’ to tackle and lots of water to cross!

The rain the night before cleared most of the snow off the paths which made for easier hiking.
We got rain on and off during the day but not in the volumes of the first day and not sideways. 🙂

Mostly impossible to keep out of the water. To be honest I didn’t even try. As Fiona said – it was like being a little kid again jumping in mud and puddles!

One of our fellow hikers was kind enough to send through a link to a few videos she took and if you are interested, click the link to check out the weather conditions she captured!
Overland Video

Be sure to check out the one with the wombat walking along the boardwalk through the snow!  The sideways rain video was good to see too… was a tough day’s walking that first day!
Rachel has an instagram account here if you would like to see more and I am sending thanks to her for sharing those videos and letting me post the link here.

Anyway, hope I got all that right.
For now, thats me done and off to bed!

Cheers!

 

So… Morning of Day Two… I am snug in my sleeping bag with my beanie jammed over my eyes and I am hearing people stirring and getting started for the day. I finally poke my head out and Fiona and Kim are shouting at me “Welcome to Canada” and all I see out the window is white!!!

Actually I have it on good authority that Fiona’s first exclamation was slightly less enthusiastic and mostly unprintable! haha
However, I was thrilled with the unexpected beautiful covering of snow!

Apparently the first snows are seen in April but not usually this deep.

We had some breakfast – I think Fiona had some porridge and I just some coffee, then packed up our gear – let me tell you, people – its a hard thing pulling on wet socks and shoes just before heading out into the snow!

Here is Fiona in her rain kilt looking thrilled to have a go at snow hiking!
Apparently her kilt did really well in the rain and snow overall (It was a new item she got after seeing a hiker in New Zealand wearing one)

Since we weren’t the first to set out, we had the advantage of following footprints in the snow. There are occasional poles to mark the way, which is good as the boardwalks and path in the snow aren’t always the easiest things to spot.

When there was boardwalk, it was mostly quite narrow and very easy to misstep and fall off – which we did on a number of graceless occasions!

My tactic was to note the deep prints to each side where previous hikers had stumbled off and aim for the middle.

Sometimes we would enter small glades of snow covered trees which was just magical – we would even get ‘Christmas Snow’ (Which is what we called the thick flaky softly falling pretty stuff’)
This made Fiona quite happy!

Then we had to head back out into the open exposed areas

Which is all fun and games until a blizzard catches up with you…

At times there was no discernible path. The snow became quite deep in places and our pace was slow. Its all very well to step knee-deep into a snow hole, but not so fun to wrench your leg if you are set off balance (Which with a heavy pack I assumed a possibility.)

This is Fiona’s ‘I am not fond of Blizzards’ face:

In a very monochromatic landscape, seeing the bright yellow and orange of the tree bark was a bit of a relief to the eyes!

We stopped for a brief snack and drink at the turnoff to a side trip – but not for long. Any time not hiking caused you to cool down extremely quickly.

The landscape changed again, which was a welcome sight – we knew the next hut wasn’t too far away.

Fiona reckoned this tree was an example of what happens to you when you stand still long enough up there!

Finally and not a moment too soon we found Windermere Hut, where we could get out of our rain gear and wet boots and enjoy the warmth of the hut and hear everybody’s stories of ‘The Big Snow Hike’ 😀

Those planning on camping soon decided not to.

Below is the platform that Jeff, Rachel and myself camped on last year. Doesn’t look quite as inviting this time!

In the hut, the usual shoes, socks and clothes were hanging up and around the heater (giving the air that nice lived in smell haha)
We chose a bunk and got our sleeping gear ready (more thoughtful than blowing up your mattress and squeaking about after everyone else has gotten in to bed!)

Because it was a short day’s hike and we were in early, it gave us plenty of chances to have lunch, dinner and relax, talk to people, swap stories and food.

The ranger, Mitchell was there at that hut and kept us up to date with the latest weather information and told us stories – my favourite being the girl who was walking with friends around Cradle Mt area, got separated from her group and KEPT WALKING to Waterfall Valley Hut (ie night one of the Overland Track!!) then asked him to call her an Uber Driver!!!
Sometimes people are so far out of touch with their environment it boggles my mind.  I think I laughed every day about that one.

7pm and time for bed. It was a small hut so very warm.  Fiona did have some sleeping mattress issues – ie it ran away and practically fell on the people sleeping next to us in the middle of the night. I think she wiggles one way and it wriggles the other!!

A big days hiking the next day so everyone was keen to get some sleep and be up and moving bright and early!

Cheers!

 

 

 

Hello!
Well, here we are, Day 1. Apparently a bushwalkers alert was put out since the winds were pretty solid with 100km/hr gusts, rain, hail and snow.
So we all rugged up:

Actually it was the only day I didn’t wear my thermal pants… but I didn’t suffer too much. Was getting plenty of exercise to keep warm. Just couldn’t stop long!

I think my pack was about 18kg all up. I forgot to weigh it and me before we left! Bit miffed about that! I am telling myself now I have a much skinnier backside! 🙂

I was using Jeff’s pack – we have a few budget constraints so getting a new pack for me wasn’t on the essential list. I was pretty happy with it – carried it very easily and the only time I got sore shoulders was at the end of the two longest days (third and seventh). Fiona had a lot more trouble with her pack and it not fitting right, which was an ongoing issue for her.

All the views were gloomy with details looming out of the cloud and rain. It certainly had its own beauty that was quite different from other times we have been up here

 

Fitness wise I am pretty proud of us. We didn’t gallop about but we kept up a decent pace, despite the load and the fight against the winds.

We got to the top of Marion’s Lookout, but it wasn’t the weather to stop and there was no view to admire! The camera didn’t come out from my jacket much as it just got soggy… you can see the artistic rain smudges on these shots!

It was hard to find something dry to wipe the lens with!
There was water everywhere up there – and by this time we were heading pretty smartly to Kitchen Hut to get a bit of a reprieve from the wind, adjust Fiona’s pack and scoff the sandwiches that Jeff awesomely carried up for us.

The rain brought out the great colours of the mosses and lichens

At last Kitchen Hut loomed up into view and we were very happy to get inside.
We found Kim and Brod, fellow hikers who we had connected with through facebook by chance, already there.

It was great to start meeting the people who we would often meet on the track or in the huts of the evenings. We had no intentions of trying to camp this trip unless there was an emergency.

We enjoyed our sandwiches but had to get back out there and moving to stay warm. Jeff said the fond farewells and headed back towards a fire and a cuddly kitty.
Fiona and I headed back out towards Waterfall Valley Hut through some pretty intense wind and rain.

The Fagus has started turning its colours and was really beautiful to walk through

Basically when the rain dropped I had the camera out…

Occasionally the clouds lifted a little further for better views

I think it was around this point that we started getting snowed on which made me laugh. I said we’d get snow!

Lots of water, mud and rocks to trudge through!

Whoops! As awkward as that looked, Fiona didn’t fall off that rock!! We did fall on occasion though – the wind pushed us about a bit.
One of our fellow hikers actually got picked up by the wind, pack and all then got dumped back down!!! That’s a lot of weight so a bit scary what Mother Nature can throw at you (in this case unsuspecting hikers!)

Up on the exposed plains the rain and hail came in sideways and the camera got tucked away again – we really had to fight to stay upright on the way across.
Finally we made our way down and reached the hut, a bit shell shocked and soggy!

We changed out of our dripping gear and hung stuff around the heater. It might not have crisply dried everything but at least your clothes weren’t icy to put back on the next morning.
The bunks had big platforms for people to put their sleeping gear on. A few people braved the old hut and the hungry rodent (Well done, Angela, Martin & Paul) and the rest of us squeezed in here.

Nobody stayed up to party. In fact, pretty much every night people were tucked up and falling asleep by 7pm – a fact that we all laughed at ourselves over! Night falls earlier now and everyone has had a hard day, so as much sleep as possible seemed to be everyones aim.

Fiona and I had started earlier than most so made it in good time to the hut. People started trickling in – two dads with their kids arrived. One fellow and his daughter who were from Tassie and their Melbourne friends. The poor kids were little shivering puddles when they arrived! Mind you – they recovered well and did an exceptional job hiking the trail over the coming days!

Time to snuggle down into the sleeping bags and get as much sleep as possible for the next days hike!

And in real time – I have managed to catch a cold – went for an 8km hike today with a 12kg pack anyway (something about eating a scandalous amount of potatoes last night). Really feel its time to get to bed!
Hope you have enjoyed the start of the adventure!

Cheers

 

 

 

Hello!! I am back, showered warm, enjoying the fire and looking at the time feeling odd that I haven’t hiked for 5 hours today!
Well… we started in epic conditions. I think there was a bushwalkers alert out. 100km/hr (62mph) wind gusts along with rain, hail & snow!
Jeff walked with us up to Kitchen Hut where we ate some lunch before parting company – Fiona and I heading on and Jeff hiking back to the car and home (and a fire sob sob)

I am so glad we left early that first day. Its a bit over 10km with a lot of uphill parts along with some very exposed areas that were challenging in those winds! It also meant we reached the first hut in good time to change and recover a bit!

What we didn’t expect was to wake up to see snow a foot or so deep the next day!!

It was stunningly beautiful and I always wanted to have a go at snow hiking!! That was a tough day though as the path was hard to keep, the deeper snow was tricky to traverse (we fell down a lot) and we got hit with a decent blizzard while on the exposed plains part of the track (of course)

There were moments of concern, especially when the track route wasn’t obvious and the snow quite deep. But we, along with the other shell-shocked people who started on our day – all made it to the second hut in one piece!

From there on the weather grew steadily better! The long day three (nearly 17km) was rain and wind off and on, but a superbly beautiful walk.

Mud was unavoidable – I tended to plough right through as it was less energy than trying to rock hop. In the end, you were going to end up in a mud puddle!

Sometimes the track was covered in water.
Ok… I think 85% of the time the track looked more like a creek course, but sometimes there were exciting waterfalls to walk across!

No choice here about paddling. The boardwalk was about half a foot under water!

I have just added about 1500 images to the backlog of photographic post processing to wade through (Although that kind of wading will be more comfortable!!)
We have no immediate guests arriving so looking forward to some quiet days to get gardening and photos attended to, then I can return to share more of the recent adventures!

Hope you have all had a great week too – but perhaps hope you were all a little drier, less smelly and had more toilet paper!! 😀

 

 

Well… thats me about packed!
Jeff took the kids off on an adventure today so I could get my brain in order and go over my gear. (and pre prep dinner!!)

Bag weighed in at 17.5 without my water or jerky.
Hmmmm
Did a bit of a jettison act and got it under 17.
Still undecided about camera gear. But I have one whole day to think about that!
Weather calls for a lot of rain and from the recent photos I have seen, the paths are more like creeks!! Fun fun!! So excited!! 🙂

Off to bed – hoping to get some kayaking in tomorrow morning and one more beach before Moe and Ryo have to fly out!

Cheers!