Day: 008
Date: Tuesday, 14 May 2024
Start: Burro Mountain
Finish: Saddleback Canyon
Daily Kilometres: 39.0
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 244.7
Weather: Cool early then very warm and sunny.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Trail mix
Dinner: Noodles/Rehydrated meal
Aches: Dave - exhausted (again) and some niggles; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: The last hour or two of the day were spent walking down the magnificent Saddleback Canyon with towering rock bluffs overlooking the flat sandy canyon floor.
Lowlight: None really.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We were hiking by 6am on another beautiful morning, but Dave was struggling straight away with soreness and stiffness from yesterday. Drugs (Paracetamol) were the answer and we began to enjoy the lovely single track trail through scattered forest.
There were plenty of trees, but not dense enough to shade much of the trail and, as the sun rose higher, it became very warm. Our usual MO is that Julie hikes at her pace, faster than Dave, but stops and waits every 5-10 minutes for him to catch up. It was very noticeable today that she was always waiting in the enticing shade of a tree when Dave arrived.
The undulating trail was lovely walking as it followed a ridgeline northwards with occasional views and it stayed that way until late afternoon. Water was an issue, with limited availability and, at each water source, we were calculating how much we needed to carry based on how far the next water source was and how reliable it might be. As it turned out we managed well.
Our stretch goal for the day was a cattle bore in Saddleback Canyon, but Dave really began to struggle again with leg and foot pain with 5km to go and our pace slowed. Fortunately, when we finally descended to the canyon floor, the walking became easy and we pushed on to the bore, arriving soon after 6:30pm.
We found a site near the bore and, although there are a few cattle about, it's a lovely spot with the canyon walls towering either side.
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