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Journal: |
My old running friend, John, was kind enough last night to come
and retrieve me from Pakenham station at the end of an 18-hour
Fawlty Towers train trip down from Gosford. We got to his place at
11pm and were up again at 5am for breakfast and the drive to
Walhalla, the old gold mining town in the mountains from where the
AAWT begins its 650km journey north through the Australian Alps to
near Canberra. By the time I had stuffed around a bit, it was 7:30
before I started walking on a cool sunny morning with some wisps of
fog.
Although the early walking was easy and scenic as it followed the
contours of the steep-sided forested valley on an old tramway, I
struggled with balance with my fully-loaded 25kg pack, and some
remnant fatigue and stiffness from Saturday's 45km Six Foot Track
trail race in the Blue Mts. Not to mention two nights of less than 5
hours sleep. Anyway, I was fortunate the early going was easy and I
gradually got into the groove. After 10km on the tramway and a
restored footbridge high above the Thomson River, the day's work
really began with a steady and quite warm climb of around 1100
metres up Mt Erica through pretty rainforest with an abundance of
ferns.
Near the top the vegetation changed to snow gums and Myrtle
shrubs and it stayed that way as I followed a beautiful path across
the Baw Baw plateau. In places it was almost park-like and there
were some interesting boulders at Mushroom Rocks. From 4pm, fatigue
started to set in and I slowed and didn't reach Rock Cave, my goal
until 6:45. I ended up camping literally on a side trail near a
swampy alpine creek and hastily set up camp, had a quick wash and
dinner and got into bed at 8:45. I had done 31km for the day,
including the long climb, and felt pretty satisfied. My new
pack, boots and gaiters had all done pretty well, though I had
collected a few leeches during the day along with heaps of spider
webs....and some spiders!
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