A four-day, 100km hike to test all my brand new gear (and me!) seemed like a good idea, especially since I haven’t ever done any hiking coupled with wild camping (other than the aborted attempt earlier in the year) and I’m about to leave for 5 weeks of mostly hiking, mostly wild camping on the other side of the world. With my departure date fast approaching, I picked a fairly ambitious distance and a couple of possible weekends. I thought my hiking partner from the last trip, Steve, would flatly refuse when I mumbled something about a 31km day, but luckily he thought it through, decided he was up for the challenge (with several contingency plans if not!) and agreed to join me.

Day 1 – Sullivan Rock to Canning (23km)

We met at a place called Sullivan Rock, about 70km SE of Perth along Albany Highway, with the plan to walk 101km along the Bibbulmun Track back to Kalamunda, where we could catch the bus home. After final repacking and general messing around, we walked out of the parking lot at 10:40am. Across the highway, into the bush and straight onto an almost vertical wall of granite! I thought this was a fairly rough start to the walk and was surprised that our first ‘mountain’ was so early. Still, we climbed it very easily. Sadly, this was not the first mountain, just a little foothill for it!

Not Mount Vincent

Getting up the actual mountain (Mount Vincent) was not too difficult either and rewarded us with some lovely views. It also started drizzling at this point, but I soon scared that away by putting my pack cover on. We passed a large walking party (Bushwalkers of WA) and arrived at the first hut for our lunch break. There was already another large group of Bushwalkers here, and the group we had passed arrived shortly afterwards so we quickly finished up and headed out again (table space was in short supply!).

It turned into a beautiful day and we had a long but reasonably uneventful walk into Canning campsite where we were staying the night. We arrived at about 5pm which left us just enough time to set up camp before it got dark. This left us eating in the dark and there was a lot of laughter over some terrible failures with new food strategies, including a pot of noodles which simply refused to soften! Green ginger wine made the situation better though, even when drunk out of a bowl, as I don’t carry a cup!

Some sore feet, but no other problems. Still, not looking forward to tomorrow’s 31km if today was only 23!

Day 2 – Canning to Beraking (31.1km)

It was a clear and very cold night for most of it, with a light drizzle developing towards morning. My sleeping bag was excellent – nice and cosy when tucked in around me, but cooled off easily if I opened it out a little. My sleeping mat is also excellent for warmth but sadly very slippery on the silnylon tent floor – I think I spent half the night chasing it around! The tent was good in most respects – easy to pitch, roomy enough inside (though I wouldn’t want to have 2 people in it!) but I had a lot of condensation on the inner during the night.

There was no rain in the morning, but it was very damp, with a fine mist settling on everything. I had the fun of packing up a wet tent, which just got more water on it when I left it to dry in the mist over breakfast!

This was going to be a long day, so I resolved to tackle it 10km at a time. Steve left at about 8am, with me about 10 minutes behind due to mucking around repacking gear (I’m probably actually quite good for an amateur, but am already comparing my performance to a seasoned traveller!). Walking completely by myself was a new experience, but one which I quickly adjusted to . . . and then caught up with Steve anyway!

We kept amused with some impressive rock scenery (Abyssinia Rock), dieback boot wash bays and speculation about the giant who had walked the opposite way to us (boot prints that must’ve been at least a size 20!). However we didn’t actually see a single soul for the entire day. The weather was beautifully sunny so I hung one of my solar chargers off my pack shoulder strap and it seemed to be charging well.

Dewy spiderwebs in the sun

We reached the first hut, had a bit of a break, donned our waterproof jackets and pack cover (the weather was looking a little ominous) and headed out again. More walking and we reached our second hut for our lunch break, still going OK. Waterproof pants went on shortly after this as a light drizzle started up. We went well for another 6 or 7 km (25km in total so far) then it all went downhill (figuratively. Literally it was mostly uphill!). We hit horrible terrain with incredibly steep uphills and downhills (both as bad as each other), slippery, rough ground and some devastating wrong “distance remaining” calls by me. Eventually we staggered into Beraking Campsite. Beraking is situated on the edge of the hill with a stunning view towards the coast. Frankly, I would’ve preferred to miss the views and have the campsite 2km back down the track!

Still, it was only 4:30pm, a lovely campsite, and we had made it. A great achievement. Now all we had to do was get through the night and still be able to move in the morning! We watched the sun set for several hours (then decided that it must actually be the lights of Perth or Rockingham we could see) and had dinner (more successfully than yesterday) while watching an impressive display of lightning off the coast. Luckily it was far enough away that we couldn’t even hear the thunder and it was heading south, not east towards us.

On a side note, I actually had to bash my tent pegs in today (yesterday they just slid in easily). The Vs definitely went in better than the carbon stakes, but both worked well, and having the composite set is nice.

Day 3 – Beraking to Ball Creek (26km)

It rained for most of the night. It didn’t seem to be leaking through although it was still quite damp on the inside due to condensation. Probably better than yesterday, but condensation is a whole nother issue that I’ll talk about later. Even though it had stopped raining by morning I practiced a full “pack up and get dressed” inside the tent (successfully) then tried a reverse pack up of the tent (take the inner out first, then the fly). My new system for this was also successful but leads to VERY cold fingers! Some waterproof gloves are looking more and more important!

We departed again at 8am (together this time) with everything going smoothly for some relatively easy walking. We had some great views and interesting theological/metaphysical discussions to keep us occupied up to our first hut at Waalegh, perched on the edge of a cliff. Amazing views but a bit exposed for my liking.

Approaching Waalegh campsite.

My “track name” for today has become ForKay . . . becomes it seems that most times I announce a distance it is always “only 4km away”.

We got our first view of Mundaring Weir, which we would reach tomorrow, then were onto the middle, tricky (steep) section of today’s walk. We passed a large group of what looked like uni students going the other way. Then through Chinaman creek/gully, which was one of my favourite spots, . . but no photos sorry. They wouldn’t have captured its beauty anyway. We continued through the steep terrain, with some nice open country dominated by Summit Gums (our name . . we couldn’t remember what they were called) allowing for sweeping panoramic views. Then all the way up the hill to Helena campsite for lunch. We allowed ourselves a fairly long break and were just about to leave when another guy showed up. As we walked out, we passed his mate (who he’d left behind) a few hundred metres down the track. He was in worse condition than we were and no wonder with the size of the packs they were both carrying!

After this tricky section we had a fairly easy walk to Ball Creek. After a lot of doubt over whether we’d make the full distance today we actually did it easily, getting into camp at 3:30pm. I set the fly up to dry (again using my new “no-inner” mods) and sat down for some nibbling and reading. We had some decent rain today but, happily, all our waterproof gear held up to it.

Day 4 – Ball Creek to Kalamunda (21km)

We again managed to leave camp at about 8am (although again, Steve left without me as he was getting cold). I was a bit miserable with incredibly cold fingers from packing up the wet tent, but the beautiful misty morning and lots of photos soon cured me of this. The photos also meant I didn’t catch up to Steve but luckily he waited for me at the Forrest Centre because the signage was terrible and I almost wandered off down the wrong track.

It was strange suddenly being back in civilisation, with the Forest Centre, then Mundaring Weir. There were lots of wallabies and kangaroos, clearly accustomed to seeing people around as they weren’t scared of us at all. We were considering stopping at the Mundaring Weir Hotel but decided to push on. The dam wall was scheduled to be closed for maintenance work which would mean we’d have to walk down the steps all the way to the bottom of the dam and back up again. Luckily for us, it was still open so it was a nice, flat (and scenic) walk across the top.

Panorama, looking SE from Mundaring Weir across C Y O’Connor Lake

We had some relatively easy walking for a bit, passed a school group (with a harried teacher chasing up behind them) then arrived at our only hut for today (Hewitt). We had a nice chat to a lady there who was training for a two stage full Bib Track hike later in the year (Kala – Balingup, then Balingup –Albany). She got by with a very light pack and it was interesting to hear her strategies for food over such a long distance and time.

Onwards we went . . . 12ish km to go. We had some VERY steep terrain (“The Barriers” – it has a name, you know it must be significant!) to drop down into Piesse Brook. The views weren’t amazing but the rocky landscape was. Sadly it was too steep to carry the camera in my hand and too much effort to get it out for photos. I’ll have to sort that problem out before Scotland! Then back up the other side away from Piesse Brook. Not as steep but still very long. We saw 3 Dobermans in about half an hour (all separate owners) which was unusual enough, but seemed a little surreal when the owners were all stunned to hear that there were other Dobermans living nearby (Owner: “wow, you don’t see many other Dobermans around here” Me: “What do you mean, this is the third one I’ve seen in half an hour?!”).

After this it was a surprisingly short walk into Kalamunda townsite. A short stretch of bitumen, back into bush for 5 minutes then to the Terminus point for our victory photos! Then, more importantly, across the road to the Kalamunda pub for an amazing lunch (and beer!). Then it was a simple matter of walking around the corner and catching a bus heading back to Perth. We arrived in Kalamunda at about 2:15, and got home by 4:30 for showers and rest.

In the end, a very successful trip and quite enjoyable. It was tough at times and the trail is a completely different world to civilisation. It is very simple – you walk, you eat to make sure you can keep walking and you lay down so you can walk again the next day (I hesitate to say sleep, because I haven’t mastered that part of it yet!). The pace is so much slower that you really appreciate the world around you. Time is also measured differently. You walk for an entire day, essentially not “achieving” anything except moving 20-30km. It is quite wonderful and I think my biggest problem will be adapting back to “the real world” when I return.

I’m going to try to follow up with a more technical report with some distances, times and weights for those who are interested.

I know, I owe you a post . . .like . . three days ago! However, it turns out that this blogging caper is pretty hard and VERY time consuming. For those who don’t know, the post I owe you is about my four day hiking trip. Only one person has tried to find out if I’m still alive though so I guess I managed to tell almost everybody who knew I was going that I got back safely. Or you’re all used to me being hopeless with communication but reasonably competent at other things so you assumed I was OK.

While I write up my adventures and sort through and edit hundreds of photos, I’ve decided to give you an interim post (mainly to let anyone I forgot to tell know that I’m alive and well):

The Waugal (also known as the Wagyl, Waugl, Waagal) is a snakelike creature from the dreamtime of the local Noongar (aboriginal) people. He was created by the Rainbow Serpent (who created the land and people) and created and protects rivers, lakes, springs and wildlife. The Darling Scarp (the big line of hills east of Perth) represents his body (thanks Wikipedia!).

The Waugal is the symbol used for trailmarkers on the Bibbulmun track:

I discovered on my walk that life as a Waugal trail marker is quite precarious. You can be eaten by trees:

burnt by fire:

(or corroded some other way??)

or drowned:

I also saw one that had been decapitated, a properly burnt one on a burnt tree (which looked the same as the one above), and one that had been almost entirely swallowed by the tree, but I hadn’t started taking my “Waugal series” of photos at that point. Interestingly, the new markers are not hammered fully into trees so there is at least an inch of growing before the tree starts to eat the marker!

I promise I’ll try to get the real post out in a couple of days. Notice I said “I promise I’ll try” not “I’ll promise I will”!

A lot of people ask me why I’m planning on hiking in Scotland, so here are two main reasons:

1. Mum and I took a holiday there in 2012 and absolutely loved it. I have just added an entire page about this holiday so maybe you can get some idea of what an amazing trip it was. Somehow, Scotland managed to get a hold of me, and I’ve been itching to get back. WARNING: The page is long and has lots of pictures. I kept the text and pictures as minimal as I could (no more than 1 photo of each thing in most cases, and no photos at all for many) but the fact is that we did a lot in the small time we were there. If you do want to read it, see the top menu, or click here.

2. If you’ve read my rowing page, you’ll know that I wasn’t well during my Nationals campaign this year. Actually, a lot of the time was downright miserable. At those points I often found myself thinking “I wish I could get away from everybody and just walk and meander and . . . ”

And so the idea of hiking around Scotland with just me and whatever I could carry was born. The idea was one of the things that kept me going through some of the really miserable rowing and, as soon as the rowing season was over, planning began for this trip.

There are also many practical reasons for hiking in Scotland:
1. No shortage of water for drinking – reduces the amount of water (weight) I need to carry. Also reduces the chance of mucking up and dying of dehydration!
2. No large predatory animals that can eat me, and not too many dangerous little animals that will kill me (although I am scared of the ticks).
3. Scottish “freedom to roam” laws mean I can legally walk wherever I want, as long as I don’t mess with anyone’s property (and follow the code).
4. Generally English speaking, civilised, friendly and accustomed to walkers.
5. I’ve been there before so am vaguely familiar with it.
6. Decent weather ie comfortable temperatures when I’m planning to travel and little chance of catastrophic or dangerous weather events.

I feel like I’m such a real hiker putting up a post titled “tent mods”, but I’m not sure what I’ve done actually classes as proper tent modifications! I haven’t actually modified the tent in anyway. What I have done is set up a piece of cord in a triangle with loops in each corner so that I can pitch my tent fly first.

Normally my tent (Terra Nova Solar Photon 2) pitches inner first, with the poles fitting into the inner tent. Basically, you can’t put the poles up without the inner being on the ground. This means that if you are pitching in the rain, the inner will get wet. If you can’t pitch the tent very quickly (which I can’t . . . yet) then it means that the inner tent may get very wet. Obviously the same happens during ‘tear down’ (packing up).

My solution, rather than learning to pitch very quickly, is to set up a system of cords the same dimensions as the inner that I can slot the tent poles into that, pitch the fly, then slot the inner in (including slotting the poles in) afterwards.

Here is my setup, with poles slotted into the cord and no inner in sight! (I did this by setting the poles up in the inner, tying loops in the correct places in the cord, then removing the inner).

And here, with fly, poles and cord . . . still no inner.

The fly also slots onto the bottom of the front two poles. I learnt a lot about how to pitch the fly to get it sitting properly – slot the poles into the fly, do up all the Velcro loops on the pole, then stake it out. Otherwise it’s hard to make sure it stays centred and in the right position front to back.

And here, with the inner slotted back in underneath. This requires unhooking the fly for the front poles, and I also took the cord off and put i back in underneath so I could take it off entirely once it was fully pitched (this was easy enough to do). As you can see Merlin has learnt pretty quickly to stay a long way away from the tent! There was a bit of a panic and some yelling the first time I pitched it and he almost walked all over it!

Here are some details of the cable – pole attachments. It also shows my variety of pegs, in-situ. I added an extra loop so that I can peg the poles down if I need to. They also make it easier to slot the poles in and out.

Since this I’ve added some loops to the top of some of my Terra Nova V stakes. This makes it easier to pull them out and also gives me a loop to help pull the Ruta Locura carbon stakes out (these don’t have a hole I can put cord loops through).

While I had the tent out, I also cut my groundsheet to size and started constructing a dodgy bathtub floor to cover most of my vestibule (as much as my current piece of Tyvek covers!). The purpose of this is so I can leave things outside my main tent but keep them dry in the case of heavy rain causing significant running ground water (OK, maybe a little paranoid about this due to my last hike where if I had’ve left my bag or shoes outside they would’ve almost washed away!!). I don’t really know much about groundsheets, or creating bathtub floors, so I’m sure I’ve done a suboptimal job, but it was my first go, by myself so hopefully it’ll be fine and I can refine it later if I need to! (the pegs are construction tools only!)

Also, I’m definitely getting better at pitching my tent!

Got my maps yesterday! Sooooooo exciting. Here they are:

The orange ones are 1:25,000 scale and cover all of my north western walk. I’m probably not taking them with me though (too heavy to carry them all). I had two custom maps made up to specifically cover the exact area that I needed at a 1:50,000 scale (so yes, the bottom two map covers do actually have pictures of Quinag and Merlin on them!). The plan is to transfer any necessary detail from the 1:25,000 scale maps onto my custom 1:50,000 maps by hand (e.g. additional paths, footbridges etc). As well as the weight of the maps, and the ease of handling, I have read that sometimes the 1:25,000 maps have too much detail, particularly in the “cnoc and lochan” type topography that I’ll be travelling across. There is so much detail and contour lines that it’s actually difficult to make out the major geological features. I’m also very familiar with a 1:50,000 scale from rogaining so it will be easier for me to automatically estimate times and distances.

The other maps are 1:50,000 maps of the West Highland Way area. I’ve only covered a small section of this walk with proper maps as most of it will be on paths. I’ll print out some rougher smaller scale maps and instructions for this and the Great Glen walk. One of the maps I bought covers my side-trip to Buachaille Etive Mor plus an off-path Great Glen section I want to do to Glen Roy so I thought it was worth getting. It also covers all of Glen Coe, Ben Nevis etc so I’m sure will be useful in the future. The other map was a bit of an impulse purchase – when I was already spending so much money on maps one more didn’t seem to be a problem, and it is great to have so much information about the area I’m walking through. I love maps!!

For the rest of my map requirements, you can look at proper topographic maps for anywhere at the Ordnance Survey website (www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk – OS Getamap) and I have bought a subscription so I can print out scaled A4 topo maps.

I had some fun looking at the maps yesterday and discovered some significant rivers and lochs in my way, so will be looking at Google Earth to see if they look crossable . . . or if not may need to modify my planned route.

I also received my spare camera battery yesterday, but haven’t tried it out yet. I got it (plus a spare phone battery: 2 items = free postage) from a company called Better Batt. I’m really impressed with them. They’re a family business offering decent priced (ie $18 instead of $60) batteries with a 400 day money back guarantee (so they obviously have confidence in the quality) and they were incredibly easy to find the right type of battery and order from.

I recieved another package in the mail this week: Half a set of tent stakes, plus a Petzl E-lite, which not only fills a significant gap in my hiking gear, has also come in very handy around the house this week!

The stakes are the Terra Nova Superlite Titanium V’s. I’m very impressed with them – in terms of look and feel anyway as I’m yet to try them out in the ground with a tent attached! These combine with my 8 Ruta Locura carbon stakes to give the 14 stakes needed for the tent. I was going to get 7 of each type but coincidentally the V’s came in a 6 pack and the carbon stakes came in a 4 pack! They add ~100g to the tent weight (6 x 10g + 8 * 6.25g) but I think it is definitely worth it. Here is the full set, with the ZPacks stake bag (2.5g!!). I’ll probably take the original “stakes” as well just as an extra option (at 1g each, why not?!)

This completes the set of gear to go with my tent, although I have a bit more tinkering to do before I’m completely happy with my setup. I need to cut my groundsheet to size and will endeavour to make a bit of a bathtub floor for my vestibule area too (so I can leave my pack outside the tent and have some chance of it staying dry in wet weather). I also want to rig up some rope to allow me to pitch the fly first, then put the inner up afterwards. I’ll explain in more detail (with pictures) when I get around to doing it. By the way, I’ve just put a couple of new pictures of my tent on the Tent page. (look, I’ve got this linking thing sorted!)

And now for the “proper test hike”. More than a just a long walk, as it will involve camping, and it should be a proper test of my setup. I have almost all of my gear now, with just a couple of minor things to arrive, buy or decide upon and really should give it a go before taking it all the way across the world.

The plan for this test hike is to walk 101km along the Bibbulmun track over 4 days, getting dropped off at Sullivan Rock and walking back to the northern end of the track in Kalamunda, where I can catch a bus back to my house. The walk will be staged as follows:

Day 1: Sullivan Rock to Canning Campsite. 22.8km. There are two substantial hills, with mainly bare granite which can be quite slippery and difficult in the wet.

Day 2: Canning Campsite to Beraking Campsite. 31.1km. There is one substantial hill (also possibly granite) and several patches that can be very boggy (great practice for NW Scotland!)

Day 3: Beraking Campsite to Ball Creek Campsite. 26.4km. Undulating terrain with a couple of major rivers (with proper crossings) that add some substantial up/down walking.

Day 4: Ball Creek Campsite to Kalamunda. 19.8km. Undulations, plus a nasty finish to Kalamunda which sits at the top of the hill!

My friend Steve (from the previous ill-fated multi-day test hike) has agreed to come along. I really thought I’d scare him off with the 31km day, but he says he’s more scared of the day after the 31km day! (ie when the knees don’t bend and the back doesn’t straighten)

I look forward to giving you a glowing trip report of how well it all went when I return (it’s a bit late now if everything fails or I simply don’t enjoy it!!)

Also, a special “hi” to my grandparents who are following my blog and are now official sponsors of my trip!
And to my friend T, who gave me Bibbulmun track maps as a present a few years ago – it’s taken me a while but they’re coming in very handy!

For those who don’t know Perth, Kings’ Park is that little hill to the left of the city. Love the new camera’s panorama function!

Merlin and I went for another long walk today, roughly the same route as the last one but the opposite way around. I must say, I didn’t cope with going up the Kokoda steps nearly as well as I did going up Mount Street! 17.5km, from my Garmin watch as the GPS logger is away to be fixed, and about 3.75 hours (plus an hour lunch break with Dad in the City).

It was daytime for this walk, and what a stunning day it was!

I also saw an interesting bird that I haven’t photographed before on the way home. I haven’t looked up the exact species, but assume it’s a spoonbill of some type.