Well after all the junk food and copious amounts of meat etc over the Xmas break, drastic action was needed. I foolishly clambered onto the scales last Friday OMG 4 kgs in a 2 week period heavier !!
I have been looking at walking "The Corker" trail into Barrington Tops National Park for a while now. It makes a lot of sense as it's only an hour’s drive to the trail head and looked like a stupid track to lose some weight on.....
I could even see on the topo map it wouldn't be fun, It's about 8-9 km's to the top but has nearly a 1000 meter elevation climb, subtract the few flat sections from the trail along the ridges and it's one bugger of a hill.
Even worse was the predicted 37 C weather on Sunday........mmm at least I'd lose some weight I kept telling myself.
Anyway after a few hours including lots of sweat, drinking copious amounts of water and maybe a little bit of bad language we arrived at Carey's Peak, The view was worth it but man, It was still hot !
I ended up stupidly swapping packs with Greg about a 1/3'd of the way up. Greg's 20 years my senior and is a traditional backpacker, You know the type, 20 kg, 75 litre pack. I just felt bad as I was kinda doing it okay on the hills but he was not.
The minute I handed him my 10kg pack, you should have seen the grin. I didn't grin when donning his mammoth thing and I'm a bit longer in the torso than Greg so I bore most of the weight on my shoulders.....Not good.
I very gladly gave him the stupid thing back after we reached the peak. Too note was the last 2km section of the climb to the peak, The track comes to a "Y" junction with us taking the left side. We had figured it was just a slight rise and walk to the peak, Wrong !! It was actually quite steep but the worst thing was the track is in full sun and as it's quite scrubby so there is very limited air flow on the track so the temp felt like 50 C. We both hated that part as mentally we figure the hard yards were done, it kinda sucks to round the corner and see another long climb when you didn't expect it.
After a well deserved break at Carey's Peak we decided to follow Edwards Swamp Trail around to Junction Pools to camp there for the night. That actually was a very pleasant 7km walk around the edge of the swamp with a few nice creek crossings.
The last large creek was a funny crossing, Well funny for me anyway. See I have a pair of MDL eVent short gaiters I wear over stiff Meindl leather/ Gore-Tex boots. I can clinch up the gaiters tight and cross most streams and rivers without getting wet feet, I get about 45 seconds of dry socks, After that and the water finds it's way over / under the gaiters and seeps in. So after I splashed through the knee deep 8 meter wide crossing and waited the regular 5 minutes for Greg to get his boots off he was read. Once Greg finally splashed in right where I crossed it was rather amusing to see him sink about 10" further than me and nearly topple over in the creek. LOL Aren't we humans mean sometimes but when he couldn't move forwards because of the suction, I was quickly to his aid (Not)....... after taking quite a few pictures and getting the camera out while he swore at me.......
Once we arrived at Junction pools 17kms later there were a number of 4x4's parked up and about a dozen large tents in all the premium spots. We wandered around looking for a camping spot and once the generator started, a radio was cranked up to block that out and a baby started crying we figure the long walk to Barrington Tops solitude was somewhat spoiled. So we turned back around and returned to a nice spot we had passed next to a small creek about 1km from the pools and not near anyone else. Greg thought that was funny because the only two tree's on our side of the creek were literally right on the creek. Oh well and not to be deterred I hung the hammock there and put my stakes in the creek. Once I was comfortably sitting in the hammock it was my turn to ridicule Greg while he mucked around with his tent, I don't think he likes the fact that the hammock only takes a few minutes to be completely ready to sleep in.
Just after getting all the camp stuff done we then heard the thunder booming away on the horizon. Greg commented that it would just pass after a bit of rain in 30 minutes. Well an hour and a half later when the thunder and storm clouds has finally made it too us, Greg was still saying it would pass. I wasn't so sure as it took a long time to reach the short distance to us from when we could see it. After eating dinner under the tarp in "porch" mode and the rain had started it was looking to be an awesome storm. Heaps of lightning and thunder, some a bit close for my liking, wind and heavy rain continued for about an hour with Greg's comment about the storm passing was looking further and further from the truth. I was having fun ribbing Greg though as he was sitting on my prolite seat, we cooked with my lite stove and under my hammock tarp, dry and comfy. Why ?? I kept asking him did he bother to pack 20kg's worth of junk if he was just going to use all my light weight stuff and be comfy still.........Just grumbles from Greg. We ended up climbing into bed about 30 minutes before dark and I left the tarp in half porch mode and just watch the storm for a while, Eventually the mist rolled in over the swamp and I must admit, combined with the storm, the mist it was actually quite a nice sight.
Fortunately I had left my little sleeping mask / blindfold thingy and some ear plugs in my pack from the last hunting trip. I tell you even those didn't help much. That lightning while impressive got old really quickly through my SpinnUL tarp. Imagine the paparazzi outside your hammock all night taking flash pictures constantly.....mmm thought so, Suck's ehh.
Well the storm eventually cleared at about 4am, so much from Greg's 30 minute pass over........
Dawn was very nice with mist and sunrays over the swamp with plenty of roos around the camp.
In the morning when we headed off home I commented to Greg that next trip I would bring my DIY hammock (pending no bugs) and he could use my WBBB. Originally when I was pushing the hammock thing he just laughed and said it would break, leak and I’d freeze. Not this time. I think after carrying the lesser weight of my pack the day before and seeing the hammock and tarp in action for a really bad all night storm, And not getting wet he may have finally seen the light. All he replied was "okay"
We walked back out to Carey's Peak via Aeroplane Hill Track, That was an okay walk but the leeches were now out in force !! Plenty of bug spray was about that's for sure.
The walk back down the corker was made worse by the mud and the 8 trail bikes that illegally had entered the park for a ride that morning and churned the trail big time.
Interestingly we had been above the cloud bank while on the tops but once lower than about 1350 meters right down to 700 meters we were in the cloud. That was kinda nice but kept things very wet and the tree's dripped constantly.
We arrived back down at the car about 1:30pm nice and muddy, but we had a nice walk and hopefully lost a bit of Xmas weight. All up we walked about 30kms so it was a good two days.
P.S
If they guy in the Audi sports car we met with his lovely wife at Lagoon Pinch ended up walking the corker in the 4" deep mud after we left, , I'd love to know how those iridescent yellow trail runners and designer white shirt looked when you climbed back into the car LOL
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Originally Posted by Lepmeister
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