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| Hugh Gorge |
We left
camp at 7am.
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| It is quite a reach down and up to transfer the packs |
As we finished our crossing
a group of young women arrived going the other direction and appeared to be
horrified at the idea that they were going to have to strip off and go in the
water. We told them we would put our clothes on and then move around the corner
out of sight to finish getting ready to move on. I am not sure whether they were
concerned about stripping down in front of strangers or the idea of going in the
water, either way we thought it best not to be an audience. Although we were out
of sight, we were quite certain when each individual entered the water – there
are certain words that seem to flow involuntarily from one’s mouth in these
situations, and at a higher than usual pitch.
I added a thermal top, shirt, down
jacket, rain jacket, pants, wool gloves, buff, beanie and hat in an attempt to
get warm. We had a snack and then continued. It took me two hours of solid
walking to warm up. In hindsight, I should have made a hot drink and used my
space blanket to get my temperature up more rapidly.
The walk through Hugh Gorge
was pretty with a mix of sand, rock and boulder crossings. Thankfully, not the
continuous boulder crossing of Spencer Gorge.
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We arrived at Hugh Gorge Trailhead and campground at 10:30am to refill water, have a break and arrange packs. We talked about camping at Ghost Gum Flat tonight as we felt it was too early to stop for the day at Hugh Gorge Trailhead. Ghost Gum Flat is a dry camp, and we decided that it would be better to not carry the extra weight in water and go on to Rocky Gully Campsite and its water tanks. This meant our original days 8, 9 and 10 would now be done in two days. We messaged Zak from LTTS to let him know that we would like to arrive at our next food drop a day earlier than originally scheduled.
We left Hugh Gorge Trailhead at 11:10am. The path from here was
mainly across plains, and around intermittent rocky outcrops, crossing the open
space of the Alice Valley, between the Chewings Range we had been exploring,
toward the Heavitree Range. We watched many different and amazing cloud
formations move rapidly across the sky and received about three drops of rain
during our walk.
Ghost Gum Flat is a dry camp with a single table and plenty of room for tents in an open shady area with a prominent Ghost Gum. I found it quite a pretty spot.
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| Ghost Gum Flat's Ghost Gum |
From Ghost Gum Flat to Rocky Gully was up and down over rocky hills. The ground is again quite hard underfoot. This area had the most wildflowers we have seen thus far, but was otherwise relatively boring. We also saw more wild tomatoes and noted that the ripe fruit are black in colour. Today had strong winds. I was very grateful that we completed Section 4 and 5 (with Brinkley Bluff and the Razorback) on days that were much less windy than those both before and after.
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| Some of the wildflowers are almost alpine like |
We arrived in Rocky Gully campground about 5:15pm – a long day. I was tired and foot sore. I felt I was running very low on fuel. The water crossing earlier in the day had taken a lot of energy out of me to get warm again and following a very exerting day the day before plus a smaller than normal meal last night; I was very tired when we arrived in camp. I also thought I had a blister forming on one toe. We found a spot to set up our tent and made dinner.
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| The remote monitoring system for tank levels - ensures hikers are unlikely to encounter lack of water |
I then became a functional human being again. I spoke to fellow hiker, Madonna, whose amazing group and their support person were working out a way to get a birthday cake out to the trail for my awesome husband. This campsite was quite unusual in that it was crowded but my husband appeared to be the only male in camp with about thirty or more women, some of whom were very loud. If there were other men there, we did not see them. There was one group of vocal women, who were on their first day on track, doing a section or two of the trail, and seemed shocked that everyone else headed to bed by 7:30pm and intended to be up before the sun. We all hike differently, but on this trail most people we met appear to be up with the sun and go to bed early.
Statistics
Hike Distance 20.46km
Hike Time 8h 34m
Ascent 506.8m
Descent 537.1m
