Weekend #4: Balance is everything...

It may not have been a quiet weekend, but it certainly lacked the excitement of previously posted ones. There was no climbing (well, almost none), no snow-covered mountains (no camping on them, at least), no extreme sports (actually, I think the verdict came back as extreme for that one) and no trips to remote places (... alright, I've got me there).

I took one of my kites out on Saturday. I do love going kiting and it's a good few weeks since my last trip up to the cenotaph to play. My kites aren't the little diamonds tied to the end of a string with a tail of ribbons, nor sharply angled stunt kites like brightly coloured stealth fighters (interesting and unrelated note: apparently pink aircraft are better camouflaged than black). They're power kites, for snow-kiting. In lieu of standing on a ski field, I often take them out to the cenotaph if the wind's high at lunchtime, and get launched around on the grass. As power kites go, mine are just babies. The three of them range from 2.5-4.5 m2 and all have entirely different controls. The most insane one is the 3.5, running on a pair of handles instead of a control bar. It's safety features are that the handles will probably be yanked out of your hands in a strong gust. I prefer to keep a tighter grip and see how far it'll pull me. In a decent wind, it's pretty easy to go from sitting down to jumping five metres across the grass with just a twitch of the kite lines. School long-jump, eat your heart out...

The general consensus on kiting is that it's more than dangerous enough to be classed as an extreme sport, whether it's on snow, land or water. Me, I think it's a fun way to get outside during the day. It isn't much of a workout for the legs, but it's still pretty exhausting. I don't have a harness on my smaller kites, so all that power goes straight through the arms. An hour of that in a strong wind and I (almost) wished I'd been doing chinups instead.


Walking back toward North Hobart, I noticed something interesting on the cenotaph. I've seen this feature countless times before, but never considered its potential. There are timber bollards there, probably meant to keep cars off the grass. Walking past them, I was struck with the desire to see how long I could balance on one of them on one leg. I didn't have a timer, but it turns out that it's long enough to set the calf burning. That's not exactly balanced exercise though. It works the core muscles, but only one leg. So when I finally toppled off my chosen bollard, I swapped legs and tried again. When that leg eventually gave up, too, a sensible person would have kept walking home. I'm rarely accused of being sensible, and looked up to see a line of wooden posts stretching roughly in the direction I was walking. They were too far to jump between (without kite assistance), but they would do for setting a challenge. Still bereft of a timer, I settled for going from one to the next, seeing how long I could balance on one leg before I fell off. Anything less than thirty seconds (calculated using the precise method of good enough) didn't count and I had to try that bollard again. I was only a dozen or so bollards away from the end, just enough to test it out. By the time I reached the highway and returned to contemplating the uphill walk home, both legs were once again considering seceding their affiliations with my body. I had to make it up to them, and soon.

Clearly apologies aren't my strength, as this one ended up being four hours of very energetic bush-dancing, tied off with a polka endurance test between dancers and band. If you haven't done much bush dancing (other than at school, which resembles it in name only and doesn't count), that might not mean much to you. If you're not an obsessive dancer, a polka is somewhat like skipping around the room with a partner, while spinning. It's fast, energetic, exhausting and a lot of fun when there's a room full of couples all trying to avoid high-speed collisions.

The legs definitely deserved their rest after that, so they got a night's reprieve. A new day dawned to reveal Mt Wellington thoroughly doused in snow, and I was sorely tempted to go for a wander up there. Driving up would have felt too lazy though, and I was pretty sure my legs weren't up to walking up and back in the snow (something I'll really have to work on...)  so I decided to try a few of the exercises from last weekend's parkour instead. Finding a suitable ledge to jump off repeatedly is always easy enough, and amounts to doing high speed squats. A kids' playground provided a wonderful rope... thingy, which gave me a chance to have fun leaping through restricted spaces to try and land on loose ropes. There are always plenty of walls to be found for practising throwing some weight around for speed climbing. I also discovered a good rail at last. Horizontal, around twelve metres long and with a choice of a moderate drop onto concrete on one side or a much larger drop onto grass on the other, so plenty of incentive to fight for balance. Walking forward along a rail isn't much of a problem and I'm getting the hang of walking backwards, but I'm still struggling with turning around on a rail. I had plenty of bonus practise landing while I tried to figure that out...

Week #3: Burning legs and not much else

Well, I was right about not wanting to exercise after Sunday. I didn’t let myself go so far as to drive or bus into work, but the ride in was certainly painful on Monday morning. A few agonising stretching sessions during the day seemed to help, but the burning thighs I got from riding home convinced me I shouldn’t push the friendship any further. Alas, that meant no Capoeira on Monday night.

Found a few handrails near work to try balancing on at lunch-time. You know, it's a lot harder to do with shaky legs and the breeze to contend with than it was at the indoor Parkour area. I struggled to walk forwards along the bar, let alone backwards. Despite the minor sessions of abuse, my legs forgave me enough to trick them into doing the Wednesday Capoeira session. Was that really a good idea when they were still struggling? Of course not, but it built character!

So, other than being cruel to my poor legs and doing my usual rides to and from work, what did I achieve this week? Any great feats of organisation? I did a lot of organising and planning, but it was for next year rather than this summer. I fear I actually achieved very little this week and, unless I think of something quickly, I may have similar results from the coming weekend.

Since posts about getting nothing done are exceedingly dull to write (and I imagine to read as well), I’ll think fast and make sure there’s something more exciting to report by Sunday night. At least I can rest assured that I’ve planned plenty of physical abuse for next week, so much that I probably won’t be able to walk come the following Saturday… um, hooray I guess…

Weekend #3: Cafés and Parks

This weekend's preparation was a mix of looking at gear and some physical prep.

As a nice gentle warmup, I did some capoeira on Friday night. For those who haven't tried this before, capoeira is a martial art designed to be disguised as a dance. The training for it is a mix of cardio, weights and yoga... all at the same time. Add a music and singing session to the mix and you've probably got yourself a complete mess. Just try capoeira instead.

It's a while since I've been along to training, and it showed. My technique (such as it was; I was pretty much a beginner before the break) was shot and I was feeling even the easier exercises. Fortunately it was a beginners' session, or I'd have struggled badly.

Saturday's dawn found me fast asleep, trying to make up for the early start by snoozing on the flight to Melbourne. It probably didn't help; snoozing on the plane never does. Several hours after my demonic alarm clock dragged me from a warm bed, I wandered into Little Bourke st. It's Melbourne's outdoor gear centre, and I took the chance to compare a few stoves. This was an opportunity to compare the different brands side-by-side and see what they actually looked like, not what their manufacturers wanted them to look like.

That was the theory anyway. To my surprise, I discovered that Melbourne's stores aren't what I remember... or more that they are exactly what I remember. Somehow, I thought that they would have expanded their stores and range at the same rate as their Hobart counterparts. There's twice the range of gear available in Hobart now than there used to be, and it's far surpassed Melbourne. There were a number of different stoves there, but only one Optimus and none of the Primus models. It's looking like Primus stoves aren't that common in Australia and I'm leaning away from them now because of that; I can order one online, but online stores have notoriously inadequate after-sales support. That brought me back to the MSR range or a solid fuel stove.

It seems I might have unfairly maligned one of the MSR models in my last post. My past experience with the Whisperlite wasn't positive. When I mentioned the problem of a blocked nozzle, the salesman was stunned. He said, quite correctly, that it must have been at least a 15 year old model, from their previous design of fuel nozzle. I was skeptical until he dismantled the entire burner head of their demo model to demonstrate, taking it apart in 10-15 seconds. Looking at it, I could see his point. Short of mixing chunks of coal into the fuel, I wouldn't be able to block that nozzle. Lighter, cheaper and far quieter than the dragonfly or even the Omnilite, the Whisperlite has taken out first in the shellite range. How does it stack up against solid fuel? That remains to be seen.

I didn't spend the whole weekend admiring fuel stoves. I spent a while sitting in a café with some Melbournian writers, one of whom is undertaking a personal challenge far more ambitious than mine (check out 100firstdrafts.blogspot.com.au). Olio, my personal favourite of Melbourne's numerous obscure Italian cafés and restaurants (in part because they didn't attempt to abduct me and force me inside when I first walked past), provided some most satisfying repast. China-town yielded some delightful street-food. Chez Regine proved a suitable substitute usual for my usual usual of the Lark in providing fine whisky. I had the best shower I've ever encountered in any hostel or hotel, in an old mansion that's been converted into a backpackers.

Clearly a strenuous weekend, and that should really suffice for exercise, shouldn't it? I guess not.

I've always wanted to try Parkour, an activity of French origin where participants train for fleeing the zombie apocalypse by taking the fastest route through their surrounding terrain as possible. It incorporates running, climbing, descending and balance. The entire Melbourne weekend was actually because I'd heard there's a group who teach it over there.

A session of vaulting, climbing and walking along rails at their indoor centre tied Saturday off nicely.
Sunday was outdoors with more of the same, and also had a look at rolling out of drops. We practiced our rolls on concrete so that we'd know if we were doing them wrong (I was doing it wrong the first few times, as my bruised hip and shoulder will attest). Both sessions were a lot of fun, and I wish now that I'd found someone to teach me Parkour when I first took an interest a few years back. In hindsight though, doing Capoeira for the first time in months and two sessions of Parkour for the first time ever in a period of 48 hours might not have been the best idea. The lingering pain is a good thing (or so sadistic trainers have told me before) but it'll make it that much harder to motivate myself to do any serious exercise these next few days. I just need  to remember to stretch frequently and keep well-hydrated, one of the less sadistic and most useful pieces of advice I've been given for reducing muscle fatigue.

EDIT: I've no idea why this post decided it had to have a white background. Alas it seems that once the background is there, it is unwilling to be removed.

Week #2: Stoves

Gear, gear, gear… Half of my posts seem to be about camping gear. There’s been mention of boots, a brief discussion on GPSs, some talk of Satellite Phones… It’s time for a change of pace.

Today’s discussion: Camping Stoves.

I’ve used a few different stoves over the years, and have come up with some pretty firm opinions about them. The problem with those opinions is that they’re based on stoves that are at least a decade old. The advances in stoves aren’t as sudden or spectacular as those in GPSs, but things do change over a decade. To start with, though, I’ll mention the stoves I’ve used before and what I thought about them. Then I’ll have to forget all that as I look at the new contenders. In no particular order (really, it’s just as each one occurs to me), here they are:

 

MSR Whisperlite

This Whisperlite is the first shellite stove I ever used, and one of my earliest memories of camping was of watching the ring of blue flames as they sputtered and then died. The Whisperlite we had was light, quiet, cooked quickly and had excellent control. The three legs were stable for any but a large pot and it could cook a meal for a family (parents, three ravenous children and any accompanying friends). The only problem with it was one of reliability. It was a fool that took it more than ten metres from the house without a maintenance kit. It was a genius who could actually fix it with that maintenance kit. The fuel nozzle was almost permanently blocked, and no amount of work on track, back home or in the shop seemed to be able to fix this for long. Thus, the theoretically powerful stove would usually stop working within a day or two of setting out. It also suffered from pumps that needed frequent maintenance. It was usually pretty simple (sometimes just a new o-ring) but it always seemed to be required at the most inconvenient times.

 

MSR Dragonfly

The Dragonfly was our replacement for the Whisperlite. Similar basic concept but with fewer parts, easier access for maintenance, a more powerful burner and sturdier legs. The fuel pump was slightly different from the earlier ones, and I don’t think it’s ever needed on-track repairs. The stove only failed twice. The first time was when a brazed joint was melted by the heat of the burner, apparently a problem only with that particular generation of this model. The stove could still be used (if awkwardly), and the repair was fairly simple. The second failure really wasn’t the fault of the stove, rather of someone who stored some metho in one of the MSR shellite bottles. No one has ever owned up to this act, but 50-50 metho and shellite wouldn’t work in the stove. This was years before the omnifuel model seen today. Sounds like a pretty much ideal replacement for the Whisperlite, apart from one thing. It’s ridiculously noisy. Conversation in the entire campsite, let alone around the stove, is almost impossible. It sounds like a jet firing up.

Coleman (I believe) Brick

I have no idea what this stove was actually called, but I think of it as the Brick (those who know my nomenclature habits would be aware that I call most pieces of technology Bricks, regardless of their size, shape, weight and reliability). The burner was of the same style (though not nearly as loud) as the Dragonfly. The fuel tank and pump were built into the base and the whole thing was incorporated into a metal box. I can’t recall is ever failing, but it lacked the power of a dragonfly and did weigh about as much as a house brick.

 

Trangia

On school camps, we were forbidden to bring out light, compact, efficient shellite stoves, and had to use the school-approved Trangia instead. I believe this was a safety precaution, though someone did manage to detonate theirs on the first school camp I can remember using them. The fireball (and subsequent attempts to repair the distorted borrowed stove) was caused by the contents of the pot, not the burner. To this day, I find it hard to believe that he didn’t realise butter was an oil and shouldn’t have been extinguished with water when the half-packet he’d melted caught fire. Aside from that minor incident, the Trangia is a pretty reliable design. In essence, a cup gets filled with metho and set alight. There’s not much control over the temperature of this. Where most stoves suffer from problems simmering, the Trangia had trouble doing anything else. Cooking took forever. Despite its simplicity, the Trangia was nearly as heavy as the Brick, and easily three times the size. It could only use Trangia pots, which were small enough that it could actually heat them and thus too small to make food for a group.

Jetboil

This wasn’t a family stove. I went walking with someone who used one a while back, and liked the idea. Quiet, light, efficient, fast, reliable. Sounds great. But while the pots were idea for one or maybe two people, they were far too small for three. I have disagreements with gas canisters, both because it’s hard to obtain them sometimes and because they stop working in the cold. The cold is the one time a stove cannot be allowed to be unreliable. So, despite the novel design, I never felt the Jetboil was a serious stove for me to consider.

Gas Canister Stove

As with the Brick, the name of this stove eludes me. I never actually used it, but someone else in my group did on one memorable trip. It was a precursor to the Jetboil, suffered all the same problems and lacked the efficiency and speed; however, turned upside-down it could be used as a blowtorch for browning the top of a pasta bake (well, pasta boil and torch). Alas the fuel coming out of the nozzle was liquid rather than gas, so a fair amount of it sprayed onto the food before burning and left a distinctive taste behind. Beside the detonating stove, the plume of orange fire rising from the food rates pretty highly in camping stove experiences.

 

MSR Windpro

Another MSR, and another stove that I haven’t used that much. It’s quiet, fairly powerful and not too heavy. I’d consider it somewhat like a Gas version of the Whisperlite, with one major advantage. The nozzle never once blocked up while we were using it. It wasn’t without its foibles though, one of them being the name. “Windpro” implies a certain resilience in the face of adverse weather. I believe this is because there are many small burners around its edge, and if the wind blows half of them out the others can keep it alight. Unfortunately, half the stove isn’t working until this happens. If a particularly hard gust comes through, the entire stove can go out. Now this was really no worse than the Whisperlite, and a heat shield would protect it from the wind anyway, but the name implied so much more…

 

Esbit Solid Fuel Stove

This little piece of folded tin takes out the award as the lightest and smallest stove. Without fuel bottles and pumps, it saves additional space. There was nothing to go wrong with it, as it was basically a pot stand with space to put a few cubes of fuel underneath. Most people think these are a bit of a joke, a slow stove for pretend bushwalkers. I admit that I was swayed by that, until I bought one for $15 as an emergency stove. When I didn’t end up needing an emergency stove on that walk, I decided to try it out at home to see how it performed against a proper stove. Its competitor was a Dragonfly, and in terms of rapid heating, there was no contest; the MSR took line honours with ease. But it wasn’t really a fair contest, with the Dragonfly using its aluminium heat reflector around the pot. So I tried again, borrowing the Dragonfly’s reflector and putting it with the Coleman. Discounting the time taken to start the stove, it boiled 2L of water only seconds slower than the Dragonfly. Considering the essentially instant start-up, it was really the faster by far. The weight of fuel consumed to boil 2L of water was almost identical, and it didn’t require the carrying of bottles as well as fuel. The only drawback to these nifty stoves is that there’s no variation of temperature. There’s boil (two cubes) and simmer (one cube). You can’t boil and then drop it to a simmer. Given the reliability and weight though, that seems a small price to pay.

So what does all this mean for considering stoves now? Well reliability is key, which puts the solid fuel and dragonfly up top. Weight’s important too, which puts the little $15 stove out in a league of its own.

As I said, these aren’t the latest stoves. The Jetboil probably hasn’t changed since then, likewise for the solid fuel, but the others have.

Whisperlites are meant to be far more reliable now, thanks to new nozzles designed to burn pretty much any liquid fuel in existence. Quiet, adjustable and now (supposedly) reliable, they’re certainly back in contention.

The modern Dragonfly is heavier than a Whisperlite, but still heats faster and remains immensely reliable. They also have the new multi-fuel nozzles.

Optimus have a new equivalent of the Brick, called a Hiker+, which looks pretty impressive. They’re certainly reliable, and the weight’s come down a lot. Having the fuel bottle built into the stove does save having a separate pump that can go wrong. The only issue I have with them now is that it’s nearly impossible to install a wind-shield because the lid gets in the way. The case provides partial protection anyway, but that’s not the same as a full shield and protector. Without that, fuel efficiency will drop.

Primus (alright, does anyone else laugh every time they see “Optimus” & “Primus” written together, or is that just me?) has a very nice stove called the Omnifuel. Its design and specs are around the same as a Dragonfly, though it’s meant to be slightly quieter. I’ve always likes MSRs and was going to ignore these, until they released the upgraded Omnilite. It’s a titanium version of the Omnifuel. Now it’s not much lighter, but it seems to be the most fuel-efficienct shellite stove around, and that is definitely worth some attention.

I never liked Trangias before and, while there are a few new designs around, none of them spark my fancy now either.

Gas canisters are still a no-go. Loss of reliability in the extreme cold is one problem, but not the only one. On this walk, I’ll be refilling fuel halfway through while passing Melaleuca. With shellite, I can reuse the same bottles. With Gas, I’d have to get new ones and carry the empty ones.

So where does solid fuel stand in all this? The stoves haven’t really changed at all. Some super lightweight ones around, but no real change to the technology (such as it is). They are light, reliable and quiet. They are not adjustable.

Most food is going to be along the lines of just add water, because that’s lighter and needs less cooking (so less fuel). All you really need for that is boiling water, which the solid fuel can provide. It’s easy to turn it up to a higher temperature (add another cube) but can’t be turned down afterwards. I can’t think of any meals now that will actually need to turn down the temperature partway through. Everything will be pre-cooked and dehydrated beforehand, so there won’t be any slow stewing going on…

Essentially, I’m left with two legitimate contenders. While I like the silence of a Whisperlite, I can’t bring myself to trust one for a month. The Omnilite seems the way to go in shellite, where every gram of fuel I don’t burn is going to count. If I don’t need the adjustability, solid fuel sounds perfect. I guess it all comes down to the menu; I’d better start planning that next.

Week #2: Sat Phones and Tracks

Not that long since my last post, I’ve been trying out the new GPS, admiring the new sat phone (still waiting on the arrival of the charger, ordered separately, to test this out) and walking the hills around Hobart to finish wearing my boots in. Thus far the GPS has performed admirably (I’m still astounded by how much these have improved this past decade), the sat phone is sitting around tempting me to give up on the unreliable “smart” phone I’m accustomed to (since phones have had the reverse technological progression compared with the GPS, and the decade-old models have better batteries, reception and reliability) and the boots still refuse to give me any blisters.

I’m really impressed with the boots, a pair of Scarpa’s creations. They’ve got old-school solid leather tops, Vibram soles and a goretex lining, came in at $250 and are honestly the most comfortable boots I’ve ever worn. I keep expecting to find something wrong with them, but they’re determinedly reliable! I’m almost getting worried now; I’ve never had a pair of walking boots come close to meeting expectations before, and these have far exceeded them.

Planning still continues, and the route as it stands is as follows…

Farmhouse to Precipitous Bluff (20-23 days)

• Eastern Arthurs (5-6 days) to the start of the Western Arthurs via Lucifer Ridge
• Western Arthurs (6-7 days) to Junction Creek (optional supply drop here walked in from Scots Peak dam)
• Old Port Davey Track (3-4 days) to Melaleuca (food and fuel drop at Melaleuca)
• South Coast Track (4 days) to the Prion boat crossing
• Wade up the shore of New River Lagoon (1 day) to the Precipitous Bluff cavern camp
• Ascend PB (1 day) and stop at the Plateau Camp

From here, there are three options:

1. Vanishing Falls, total 25-29 days

• Vanishing Falls to Lake Sydney (4-5 days off-track)
• Lake Sydney to Farmhouse Creek (1 day on rough track)

2 Hartz, total 26-32 days

• South Ranges (2-3 days) to Moores Bridge
• Moores Gardens (2-3 days off track) to Mesa (allowing for heavy scrub around Gleichenia Creek)
• Mesa to the Hartz Carparks (2-3 days with minimal track)

South Range, total 23-27 days

• South Ranges(3-4 days) to Lune River

There’s a certain romance to finishing the walk exactly where it started by taking the route past Vanishing Falls, but 4 days of scrub bashing to cross a few kilometres of valley doesn’t appeal as much as you might think. Hartz almost closes the loop and promises some good views along the way, but there are a few kilometres of unknown along the way, which probably amounts to scrub-bashing (this is Tasmania after all). I have no intention of heading out to Lune River unless something has slowed the trip down to the point where a quick and easier route out is needed.

Another option, too ridiculous to really consider and all the more tempting for it, is to drop some lightweight 1 person rafts in at Melaleuca, take option 2 through to Moores Gardens and drop into the Upper Picton to raft out to Farmhouse Creek. Much as I’d love to close the loop with a quick rafting trip, I’d be depending on predicting the rainfall a month in advance. By then it would be mid December and, that far up the Picton, an empty river would be entirely possible. Hauling gear down a muddy, leach-ridden ditch is only fun further northwest…

Weekend #2: Injuries, sticks and remote communication

Well another weekend has been and gone. What did I achieve? Not exactly what I planned to do, but it was still useful.

Following word of snow falling up on Ben Lomond, my previous weekend plans were cancelled. This is pretty normal for winter, when I include a powder clause in everything. Ever heard of a powder clause? It was explained to me by a builder in Wanaka. It was my second ski trip to New Zealand and I was riding up the chairlift over a fresh dump of southern hemisphere powder (not the same as northern hemisphere powder, but equally exciting). As often happens on chairlifts, we got to talking about where we’re from and what we do with our lives. He explained that he could go skiing that weekday rather than going to work because he has a powder clause. This clause is part of his employment contract, stating that he doesn’t have to turn up to work on days when more than a certain depth of snow had fallen on Treblecone overnight.

My powder clause is that whenever fresh snow has fallen and Ben Lomond is running, social engagements for the weekend are cancelled.

I brought two others up to the mountain with me on Friday night, both friends with an interest in skiing. One had skied years ago and the other had always wanted to try. Alas, halfway through the first day, the new introduction to the world of skiing was injured in a vicious fight with one of Tasmania’s native yetis. Here, yetis disguise themselves as rocks and pop out of the snow to lash out at passing skiers without warning.

The injury wasn’t catastrophic, but meant an end to her day’s skiing. Ski Patrol moved in and I saw first hand how they immobilised her leg, kept her warm and dealt with the symptoms of shock from an impact injury in cold conditions. Educational, but I doubt I’ll have any of their equipment on hand come summer. A few bits and pieces that are relevant hopefully won’t be of any help, for the injuries they deal with aren’t the sort you can shrug off and keep walking.

But this sounds like the sort of experience I had last weekend, experience for how to deal with everything going wrong… I needed to do some physical training as well.

Summiting the second highest peak in Tasmania in the middle of winter only sounds impressive if you haven’t been there. Even taking the (extremely) scenic route, it was barely over an hour’s casual snowshoeing to reach the peak of Legges Tor and descend the slopes back to the warmth of the ski lodge.

Some relatively easy skiing and a quick snowshoe made for more exercise than a day at the office, but that wasn’t enough.

Then opportunity presented itself in the form of a contest held in the lodge overnight: A stick, two bottles and a challenge. I’m not overly competitive, unless someone gives me a challenge. I was issued a challenge, or at least a previous lodge record was challenged.

The contest is simple: A long stick is balanced on the tops of two beer bottles, and the competitor has to jump from one side to the other as many times as they can without falling over or knocking the stick off. Sounds simple? Probably because it is. Anyone can hammer out thirty jumps without breaking a sweat. More and you start to feel it. It’s like compressing an hour’s cardio into a couple of minutes. Come morning (actually, come a few mornings later), you’re calves are left burning from the effort. I enjoy it though, for the focus that’s required, for the sheer physical challenge and for the grace. Something people usually do when they start out is to land too hard, jarring their joints and tyring them out. To get past a hundred requires lighter landings, and absorbing those landings gradually using your muscles as shock absorbers. It’s why your claves get such a good workout and forces you to practice not wearing your joints out.

Two hundred and thirty jumps certainly left their mark on my muscles, and yet my joints don’t ache at all. It was an excellent reminder of an exercise I should use more over the coming months, for the equipment it requires is scarcely hard to come by and it really is a good way to push your legs…

Since last week, planning has continued. I’ve taken delivery of a new Garmin etrex 20 and have a sat phone on the way. I was going to hire one, until a price comparison showed that buying a secondhand sat phone and getting a one month contract is significantly cheaper than hiring one for a month… As with the decision to buy a GPS rather than a stack of new maps, the length of the walk makes it worthwhile. This way, I also have a sat phone for any future walks.

Will I really need to use a sat phone much? Probably not, but it's like carrying an EPIRB; if I need it, nothing else will do the job. Status updates for any others planning to join the walk partway wouldn't hurt either.

Week #1: Navigation dilemmas

Well it’s around a week since the possibility of doing the walk this summer occurred to me. What have I achieved so far?

Apart from last weekend’s SAREX, there’s been little physical preparation undertaken this week. I already ride or walk everywhere, so  I can’t say that I’ve been doing much beyond what I did anyway. I did spend yesterday's lunch break running up and down a flight of stairs, drawing many a strange look from passing pedestrians and those in neighbouring offices. No doubt those looks will get stranger if I resort to climbing façades or the Salamanca trees instead, but I actually quite like getting strange looks. After all, the only way to avoid them would be to act normal... Yeah, like that's going to happen!

But there’s more to this trip than just the physical side. In reality, it’s not much more physically demanding than any other multiple day hike. The tracks are difficult and I’ll be carrying more gear, but the real challenge for now lies with the other preparation. Food is usually my main organisation concern, but that’s a concern for another couple of months away. Right now I’m more worried about other gear. Some of mine won’t be up to the task.

So what needs to be different? Well firstly, reliability is a major concern. If boots start to fail on day two of a four day walk, they’ll at least survive until the end. If they fail on day two of a four week walk, that’s a serious problem. Stoves, too, tend to suffer from reliability issues. A quick bit of campsite maintenance fixes most of them but I have to plan for all of them.

This week, I’ve been thinking about what I need for navigation. On paper, the walk stretches across 17 different 1:25,000 series Tasmaps. Now a few areas can be comfortably done with less detailed maps, bringing that number down somewhat. Not all of them though. The last section of the walk will be taking one of two routes with no defined trails. Navigation then will be critical. While I’ve resisted the general trend toward them the last few years, I think it’s time to look seriously at digital navigation aids.

The handheld GPS has come a long way since its origins, and still quite a way since the hiking model I played around with a few years back, which gave me an average walking speed of 70kmph. Not bad at all, though I don’t remember making all those 20 second long 40km detours that it showed on the track log. A basic GPS with just a lat/long readout is pretty cheap, but doesn’t work well under tree cover or in poor weather. If I’m not in the trees and I’ve got good visibility, I can just use a compass and the nearest mountain. Next problem: the maps of the area use two different coordinate systems, varying by around 200m. Your basic GPS can’t give you the readout in different coordinates, so best mark the new grids on the maps.

Or, do I just get a GPS with a powerful receiver and a full set of 1:25k Tasmanian maps preloaded? Compared with the cost of 17 laminated maps, that’s actually pretty appealing…  I’d still want a printed map as well for some of the more critical areas, in case of electronics failure. Say the cost of 14 laminated maps then. That's still most of the price of a decent map-capable GPS these days. Considering a Garmin eTrex 20 at the moment, mostly because of battery life and included 1:25k vector maps of Tas.

Really though, without going on about, "when I was your age, a portable GPS weighed 5kg and cost a year's wage," I still have to say that I find it impressive how far the technology has come and the prices they've fallen to. A GPS that fits in the palm of my hand, is accurate to within ten metres or so and has enough battery life to log your route for an entire day can be found for the price of an average restaurant steak...

Of course, using a GPS brings up another problem, or more of the same problem I was already facing. I need a power-supply on track. Cameras, torches, GPSs and mobile phones (large expanses of the Tasmanian wilderness now have phone reception from the peaks, and the advice to walkers is that a phone is as important as an EPIRB in an emergency) all use power. Short trips are easy; a few batteries and you’re sorted. For this trip though, I can’t afford the weight of that many batteries. Easily sorted, because I’m guaranteed at least the occasional patch of sunlight. Some walker-friendly companies have taken to making light-weight flexible solar panels designed to attach to the top of your pack. They charge AAs plus anything running on USB. Everything is charged by USB now, so that has me covered.

I've got some new Scarpas and they're breaking in comfortably without a single blister to show for it, which must be a record for me! Still looking at stoves but I've a few ideas there...

For now at least, I think I’ve worked out solutions to most of the immediate gear issues.

So what else needs doing? I still have to find myself a crew of keen walkers. I’ve repeatedly had people pointing out that once I set dates for each section of walk, I’ll end up with others tagging on for a few days at a time. But there needs to be a small core team that’ll do the whole walk. The process (it sounds so much more organised and careful when I call it that!) has been started and we’ll see how it goes. Again, that’s covered for now.

That leaves me with my other task for the week, deciding on the route of the walk itself. Many thanks to John Chapman here, with his guide books for Tasmanian walks. If you’re thinking of doing a walk anywhere in Tas and you haven’t read his notes, do so. He lists every campsite, how sheltered they are, the availability of water and how long it takes to get between them. He also mentions the off-track walks, and unmarked side trips. It’s thanks to him that I know about one of the off-track ways that I might use for the last leg of the loop. Unfortunately, the other way I'm considering doesn’t appear in his books, and I’ve only found accounts of the conditions at either end of it. A valley crossing the middle remains an unknown, and Google’s satellite photo doesn’t tell me much. Different maps show it as everything from open grassland to thick scrub.

Do I take the route that I know to be immensely difficult but definitely possible, or take the unknown path and risk spending a few backtracking? I do like the idea of a bit of unknown to finish the trip. There aren’t any supply drop points for a week preceding that track, so I can’t afford too much backtracking.

All in all, planning continues quite nicely and I’m looking forward to another weekend of physical preparation. I just have to decide what it'll... Oh look, it’s been snowing!

I think I know what the next round of physical preparation shall entail!

Weekend #1: Snow, climbing, off-track and what to do when it all goes wrong

In reality, most of my preparation must be undertaken on weekends. So following every weekend is a compulsory progress report, with any others in between as events warrant their appearance.


24 hours after planning began, I was in a police boat trying to hold my pack down as we sped along the water, bouncing in the wake of their FRV. With me were two Tasmanian Police and a member of the Uni bushwalking club, preparing to be dropped off in the wilderness with my sister and a caver.

We were dropped on the shore of Lake St Clair, where we checked our packs and set off. Of the fourteen Search And Rescue teams in the area, our objective seemed like one of the simplest. We had to follow a track over Mt Olympus, making two-hourly scheduled check-ins with exercise base to test the coverage of two different SES radio systems and standard mobile phones. We would rendezvous with another team's camp at Lake Petrarch, and walk out to Cynthia bay by 2pm the next day.

Quarter of an hour on good track brought us to the track turnoff, though we'd never have known that's what it was if Hannah hadn't done the walk before. It was a couple of scuff marks, nothing more.

We set off uphill through rainforest, still bereft of any kind of track. Ever walked in rainforest without a track? It looks open and easy, but half the ground slips out from underfoot and any branch used as a handhold is likely nothing more than pulp held together with moss. Add in a 45° incline and it was pretty hard going. Half and hour in, we hit a cliff straight across the hillside. Just six metres of vertical rock covered in dripping moss. Here we found the first signs of a track, an length of pink tape wrapped around a branch at the clifftop, above a route that afforded a few sturdy protruding roots as convenient handholds.



Hannah and I were on this team because of snow experience. Yes, we had both done a bit of climbing, but that hadn't been mentioned in our brief... This ascent was easy, but it wasn't to be the last.


The track vanished immediately beyond the pink tape and we set off blind again. Similar cliffs reared up several times, some with tape-marked easy ascents and some without. By the time we reached the flats up top, the afternoon was half-gone. Snow, bog, thick scrub and no sign of a trail had it past 4pm when we hit Lake Oenone. We had a choice: camp there in the snow and leave at 6am to try and get out in the morning, or press on over the saddle to the Cuvier Valley Track and our planned rendezvous. Our map showed a track down from the saddle into the valley...

Stay or go?

We had just over two hours of good daylight left, and some twilight to follow before torches would be needed. If we could make it to the valley floor by then, we'd be able to find the other campsite without too much difficulty.


That was the theory anyway, which might have worked if it hadn't taken an hour and a half to bash our way through thick scrub, scramble over snow-covered boulder fields and traverse near-vertical slopes by hanging onto the vegetation. We had an hour at most to find a campsite, and the saddle was bereft of a flat space large enough for a stove, let alone tents to hold six people. The other side was a vast boulder-field ending in dense scrub, similarly bereft of campsites, cairns or any signs of a track. There was no choice though, so we set off.


Half an hour later, we struck gold: a tiny pocket in the boulder-field, filled with snow enough to create space for our tents. By then we were soaked through, our outer layers frozen and our feet gone numb. We pitched our tents, ate our meals, donned every bit of dry clothing we had and bedded down for the night.


Dawn happened somewhere, though the mountain and snow-clouds in the way made this seem unlikely at the time. I can safely say that it was the coldest night I'd ever spent in a tent, and our tent nearly collapsed beneath the weight of fresh snow piled onto it. We couldn't see more than five metres when we packed and set off, and it was from the layout of tents that we knew which was was downhill.

Visibility cleared quickly though, and we left the boulders, found ways to bypass the scrub, passed through a band of sparse eucalypts, pushed through a band of some unidentified snow-covered trees which bent easily out of the way and finally hit a wall of tea-tree. It extended down the lower half of the mountainside and was broken only by enormous fallen eucalypt logs, too tall or slick with sleet for us to cross. The day wore on as we wore down, and finally brought us to the flat valley floor. We had four hours to walk the 9 km out to the exercise base when we stumbled on the track.


It was a slight depression in the ground, either an animal pad or a creek, but we followed it because it was going the right way. A flapping piece of yellow tape gave us courage and we set a blistering (quite literally, given how wet our boots were) pace. Every few minutes we would come across another piece of tape, which was fortunate because otherwise we'd have had no idea that we were still on the track. The pad we first stumbled on was the most distinct patch of track we uncovered. When we discovered a marker, it was generally by chance, buried amid tea-tree with no path (obvious or otherwise) leading on from it.


Our pace slowed to a crawl, trying not to lose our way or each other in the dense vegetation, sinking into knee and waste-deep pools that opened deceptively beneath screens of low grass in every clearing. We weren't going to make it in the few hours we had left before debrief. We wouldn't even make it before nightfall. A general despair started to set it.


Then, in one clearing, a ray of hope made it through to us from a relay tower. We had spent the last half-day in a communications blackspot, with no way of calling out, but now a window opened for long enough to let a text message through. Debrief had been brought forward by two hours due to inclement weather. Could we make it back by then? If not, extraction was on offer. All we had to do was find open ground...


Never had we been more energised, taking off for a stretch of buttongrass we had glimpsed  rising on the horizon beyond the next river crossing.

Good communication now possible, we sent out a GPS grid-reference and settled in to wait. A few minutes later, a speck on the horizon resolved into the exercise's helicopter. A brief flight over the kilometres of untracked swamp, pickup in a police cruiser and we were back at exercise base just in time for debrief.

We were soaked to the skin, cold and elated. Chopper rides will do that for you.

We piled back onto the coaster bus to head back to Hobart, thoroughly exhausted but celebrating a weekend well-spent.

As weekends of preparation go, the first one wasn't too bad...

Mission WTL: Walking the Loop…

Years ago, I saw a map of Southwest Tasmania lying on the dining room table and a few things caught my eye. Several walks appeared to connect and almost formed a loop in the wilderness. Could one walk a complete circuit? A few conversations and the perusal of some walking guides suggested this to be a distinct possibility.

Initial estimates put it well over a month and a half, requiring  a minimum of three supply drops and some seriously light-weight gear. A revised version cut down the time by a week but required the inclusion of one-man lightweight rafts and depended on predicting rainfall a full month in advance. A few more revisions and a new plan, not quite completing the loop but getting very close and avoiding such terrain as 7km of dense scrub taking 14 days, brought this down to four weeks, two supply drops and some moderately light-weight gear. We were now leaving the realms of fantasy for those of possibility.

By the time I finally had a workable plan formulated, I was also leaving the free summers of University behind. Compulsory work experience and an inconveniently timed attack of the neurosurgeons used up those last two summers before fulltime work made a four-week walk infeasible. Alas, another dream was assigned the code of “someday” which scheduled it somewhere in the timeline of never.

Fast-forward a few years to life’s circumstances opening the latter half of a November and all of the following December up as potential free-time.

Within half an hour of the possibility of free time arising, I had unearthed my old maps, dug out the track notes and set about planning. Yes, the challenge of spare time now had a solution, but there were still a few hurdles to be overcome:

• The crew of interested walkers I first gathered had since gained fulltime commitments of their own. I had to find new recruits able to drop off the grid for a month. Requirements: free time; walking experience; insane enough to agree; and most of all, a group that gets along well enough that we wouldn’t be at each others’ throats by month’s end.
• My own preparedness. Two years polishing an office chair with my rear-end 8:30-5pm meant I was not physically ready for four weeks carrying a heavy pack through rugged terrain. Worse still, I was out of practice in living out of a pack, navigating and planning trips.

While I started scoping out potential recruits, I also had to start preparing myself.

Why am I writing this instead of getting out and preparing? Motivation. Every time I have to write a post saying that I’ve done no further preparation, I want as many people as possible to take note and guilt me into doing more. Besides, if it works I want to have a written record.