What was supposed to be a 5 hour accelerated hike turned into a 11 hour Epic, with a solid 10 hours of walking involved.
The plan was to walk up fishing gap trail to the top and then hook right and ascend Mt Domain (1506M). We would then follow the ridge line of the "Tidbinbilla Range", taking in Mount Tidbinbilla, Tidbinbilla Peak and dropping down at Camel's Hump.
We'd both been up on the ridge that runs the length of the range before the 2003 bushfires and we figured that, considering back then the ridge was lightly wooded, this time around, after the fires, it would be even clearer than it was.
In reality this was partially true. Areas of heavy rock were indeed still barren of any low scrub. The problem lay with the other areas. Fire ash combined with years and years of dropped seed pods has resulted in largest amount of eucalypt saplings I have ever seen in my life.
From about two thirds of the way up the Mount Domain south spur, we hit a wall of saplings. The height was about 12 feet. Fortunately they were springy enough for us to push through and we figured that once we hit the peak we'd clear this maze.
We reached the Mt Domain summit in the time we expected so we pushed on. The journey from Mt Domain through to Mt Tidbinbilla involved steep decents and climbs of about 300 metres interwoven with these pockets of intense sapling growth. We stopped for lunch at an unmarked peak with incredible cliff faces falling off into the Tidbinbilla valley. At this point looking into the distance towards Mt Tidbinbilla only about 1.5KM away we still felt good. It was only just on 12 and we'd covered about 8KM in the 4 hours since we started. Not too shabby considering it was either all uphill, steep decents or through the "jungles".
From our lunch break spot, we pushed on over "Spot height 1431M" which was crammed with saplings making travel really hard and eventually broke out onto the ridge that leads into Snowy Corner and gazed upon the formidable looking Mt Tidbinbilla just beyond it. What we also noted was that the terain around the "Corner" was jam packed with these sapling. Incredibly jam packed. It took us about an hour to get to the top of Mt Tidbinbilla.
It was now almost 2pm. I'd expected to be home by now. On top of this our water supplies were close to running out. After a discussion we figured that continuing on now to Tidbinbilla Peak and beyond would be a bad decision, not based on the time, but more importantly, water. The decision was made to work our way back down to Snowy Corner and locate the spur line that decends to the Camel Back trail car park. We'd both been up the spur line before the fires. Once you were on the spur as long as you stayed on the high point you couldn't go wrong.
So, after thirty minutes of pushing back down through the jungle of saplings, stumbling on rocks and cracking shins or knees on fallen trees, we decided on what we both thought looked like the spur line and started to decend.
Good signs! Within about 30 metres we spotted some red tape around a dead tree. Obviously post fire so we were on the right spur line. The decent continued. It was tough, slow going pushing through regrowth, stumbling over rocks and trying to ascend scaley slopes that had been broken into a billion peices by the intesity of the 4 fire years before. The decent seemed to go on forever. Both of us ran out of water on the way down. After 2 hours of endless slog through this terrain we had made it about half way down the spur.
We continued on down, every now and then spotting pieces of tape on trees which we vainly hoped would lead us to a well formed track. Eventually we came across some different tape. One piece had the words "Lyre Bird" on it. Yes! We had reached the remnants of the old track system that was available for tourists in the park. The track was still fairly well cleared as well so we picked up a bit of speed. Eventually though the track disappeared (One day I will work out where it went) and we again resorted to stumbling through the bush making our own path.
The bush had changed now too, with those horrible prickly natives appearing everywhere, spiking you through, even through your clothes, whenever you brushed against them. Again we chanced upon some tape and made out a faint track, this time well marked with tape. We pushed along until the tape ran out again. We could see a creek and a quick check on the map showed that we were within 100 metres of the road, just beyond the creek. It took us a good 15 minutes to find a way across the creek, where we replenished our water bottles and filled up on much needed fluids.
Once over the creek, the road was only 20 metres beyond and we forced ourway through the last bit of prickly bush and shin smashing dead trees with much gusto. The track was a godsend. We finished up by following the track 3KM back to the main reserve road and then one final kilometre to the car. Seeing the car was a glorious moment.
In summary, we travelled about 16 kilometres in 10 hours. The vertical component would have been at least 1000M.
This morning I woke up really tired but not really sore. It was definitely an adventure and we've already discussed what crazy walk we will do next.
