[Trailwalker] Tales from the trail – episode 4 – 9 weeks to go

G’day folklings,

“Have you got your keys? “ and “I’ve got my keys” were constant calls throughout this walk.
This week’s walk was from Olinda (where we finished last week), through Mt Evelyn and finishing up at Woori Yallock, a grand total of 28 km (unless you get geographically challenged and then it’s a bit longer, oops) so we really didn’t want to turn around at the end.

We had organised to meet up with Darren’s family at Mt Evelyn as the first practice run of meeting our support crew so we knew we only had to do 15 km (-ish) before we had a social break and then started off on the next 13 km.

I know I keep going on about how beautiful the walk is when walking through the Dandenongs, but we realised as we were admiring the views, again, that we really need to enjoy them now as on the actual day a lot of this will be done in the dark. Hmm, we really need to try out walking with head torches some time in the next few weeks.

So anyway, we walked through gorgeous bushland, downhill, which was even better, and turned into KC track which normally looks like a small goat track off the main path but after last week’s rain was really obvious, met up with some other walkers who turned out to be people Tracy knew, and then took a slight detour from the map. After meeting the water tank that shouldn’t have been there, we recalibrated, found a new track to get us back to George’s Track (just to keep Gwen happy) and then were back on target.

KCs track

There were a number of trees and branches down across the tracks, obviously a result of the recent storm and, after moving a couple of the smaller ones, decided that we’d just climb over. Gwen is a tad shorter in the leg department than the rest of us, so our final tree found her stranded atop a large tree trunk before deciding the only thing to do was jump off (all without losing any dignity of course). We had a final uphill (so we knew we were on the right track) scramble then climb into Mt Evelyn, making us realise why it’s called Mt Evelyn and not just Evelyn, before getting onto the Lilydale to Warburton Rail Trail. Not long after that we met our support crew, they gave us sandwiches and hot chocolate, we topped up our water bottles and were on our way again.

13 km along the Rail Trail to Woori Yallock. Flat, straight, wide path, shade for a lot of it, not a bad little walk. We tried picking up the pace a bit to push ourselves and finished about 1/2 hour before either we, or our support crew, expected us to. We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves after the walk, and went back to Tracy and Darren’s house to meet up with our full support crew to start discussing how we’re going to do things on the actual day. All in all, a pretty productive day of preparation.

Next week we’re back off the trail as Darren, once again, has other commitments. This time he’s on a Venturer camp. So us three women are choosing another location to walk.

Cheers, Tracy