Day: 132
Date: Sunday, 15 September 2024
Start: East Fork Falls Creek
Finish: Dearborn River
Daily Kilometres: 41.8
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 3878.6
Weather: Cold early, then mild and partly sunny.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts/Muesli
Lunch: Snacks/Trail mix
Dinner: Rehydrated meals
Aches: Dave - very tired and the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: As dawn was breaking, we were hiking along a high ridge with layers of mountain ranges silhouetted against the faint orange sky. Spectacular!
Lowlight: Our booked shuttle driver to Augusta tomorrow cancelled (see below).
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
Knowing that we needed to cover a lot of kilometres today in rugged country, we woke at 4am and were hiking by 5am on a cold morning. Currently, the sun is rising around 7am, so we were hiking by headlamp for the first hour and a half. The wind of yesterday was gone, and it was both peaceful and spectacular as we hiked along the high ridge at around 8000’ as the sun rose (see above).
It turned out to be a day or two halves, with the first half mostly above the treeline with great views and some solid climbing. The second half, which started with a long descent of nearly 2000’ to the Dearborn River, was through forest where the undergrowth and some deciduous trees were starting to look very autumnal in shades of yellow, orange and red.
Once we crossed the river, we followed it upstream, mostly along trail high above the river, for the remainder of the day. The mountains rising from the river on both sides were rocky and spectacular.
We began looking for somewhere to camp around 8pm, and found a spot about 8:15pm, by which time it was quite dark. This will be our life for the next two weeks, starting and finishing in the dark.
During the day, when we briefly had internet reception, we confirmed our pickup time tomorrow with the shuttle driver (third one we tried) only to be told she was now unavailable. We were not happy, as the trailhead from which we access our resupply town of Augusta (50km from the trail), is at the end of a dead-end forestry road with no through traffic. The chances of getting a lift on a Monday, after the summer vacation has finished, did not seem good. We had heard of one couple who had taken 16 hours to get a ride.
With this in mind, we decided that the earlier we could get to the trailhead tomorrow, the better. So, despite our early start and long day today, we decided to get up at 3am in the hope of hiking the remaining 26km to the trailhead tomorrow by around noon, giving us the afternoon to hitch-hike into Augusta..
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