14 | February | 2012 | Visible Procrastinations

Archive for February 14th, 2012

[Trailwalker] Tales from the trail – episode 3 – 10 weeks to go

Published February 14, 2012 outdoors , Trailwalker Leave a Comment
Tags: #OTWM

G’day folklings,

Back on the actual track this week, we decided to keep it short as we’ve pushed our bodies pretty hard for the last couple of weeks and Gwen was going out in the evening (see we do take real life into consideration sometimes). So we chose one of the shortest sections of the trail to practice on, 7.5 km along beautiful bush tracks between Ferny Creek and Olinda.

This section of the trail is stunning. We were walking through rainforest country, with tree ferns and Sassafras under a canopy of Mountain Ash. And, shock horror!, the first half of this walk was downhill. The Alfred Nicholls Gardens are gorgeous, and would be a lovely place to come back to for a picnic when it wasn’t raining. Oh yes, I haven’t mentioned that bit yet. It wasn’t 34 degrees this week, which was a really nice change. It was 17 degrees and drizzling, but we didn’t mind the rain one little bit after the heat of the last couple of weeks. However it did lead Darren to wonder why, since we were trail-running, did we have hiking weather?

Walking amongst tree ferns - Check out the walking poles

At approximately the half-way mark, the trail became more like what we expected, and stopped going downhill and started going uphill. Hacketts Rd … universally accepted as the nastiest hill on the whole trail. It may not be the steepest (but if it’s not it is certainly close) and it may not be the longest (800 m), but it’s a hard slog. But, we tried out our walking poles and fairly flew up that hill! I’m not sure whether it was the poles, the cooler weather, or that last week’s hills were so big, but whatever it was, Hacketts Rd didn’t feel as bad as we’d expected (don’t get me wrong here, it was still hard work).
There was more uphill for a couple more km before we reached the Olinda Checkpoint and the car. At which point, Frances realised that when she’d taken her jacket off at the other car … well, her keys were in the pocket. So we turned around and went back. So, a 15 km walk and we still managed to get Gwen home in time to get ready to go out, life was good.

Warning signs on Hacketts Rd The walk down was easier than the walk up

Back at the other car we got changed into some dry clothes, drove up to pick up Frances‘ car and stopped for a coffee in Olinda. They had the largest, most impressive looking vanilla slices we have ever seen, and although we didn’t have one then we’re definitely planning a return journey.

Cheers, Tracy