AAWT Day 5: Black River to Mt McKinty, 122.4km (24.6km today)

It was a dry but cold night deep down in the valley and a restless night sleep. Sleeping low or close to water is never a great option dur to cold air sinks but can’t always be avoided. All the joints in my body ached from the descent down Champion Spur yesterday. Sleep was broken through the night. In and out of dreams.

Light started to overtake the darkness of night and a chorus of birds erupted, signalling to me to start moving. I had a big day ahead with the aim of reaching my first food drop late in the day.

Packed up it was time to hit the trail and meet my first obstacle of the day, the famous Black River Bridge; a fallen log spanning from one side of the river to the other. It is not exactly flat, sloping down on one side and can be prone to be moss covered and very slippery. Perched above the ice cold waters of the Black River I’d heard many a story of extremely experienced hikers crawling across on their backsides rather than walk upright.

Much to my delight on approach I saw that maintenance work had obviously been carried out since last season. A highly experienced chainsaw operator had taken to the bridge to level it out into flatter steps and chicken wire had been installed to improve grip. Awesome work by the fire crew that did this work.

Reaching the other side of the river the fire crew’s recent handy work continued in the form of a cleared track to kick off the steep climb up towards Mt Shillinglaw. This spur line has been known to be incredibly overgrown with hikers having to push there way through regrowth towards to top. I had been spoilt. The path up was still steep and was slow going on tired legs, some 6km or so on a mix of single track and long closed 4WD tracks. At some stage I’d reached the 100km mark. Go me.

Eventually I reached to Jamieson-Licola Road and the remainder of the day spent walking on 4WD tracks.

The offical AAWT route leads up the JL Road towards Mt Skene and onto Rumppf Saddle but I had other ideas. Middle Ridge Road takes off from the main road, skirting around Mt Skene and ending up at Rumppf Saddle. It also has the only water source in the area. Middle Ridge Road was also where I ended up having to cache my food drop, about 4km east of Rumppf Saddle, due to a seasonal road closure on the JL Road. But the east way in to Middle Ridge Road was a treacherous route in which I lost 2 mud flaps and did some minor panel damage. To retrieve my food drop post hike there was no way I was headed back in the east side so had the cunning plan to hike along Middle Ridge from the west and scout it’s drive ability.

The walking was easy and fast on the road surfaces. At the last water source along Middle Ridge I stopped for lunch, spilling gear out across the road to dry.

From lunch it was a road trudge towards my food drop. It was well hidden and I knew it would be there undisturbed. I was however disturbed by its weight. How the hell was I to carry all this additional weight. But first things first. There was a beer waiting inside and it was like pulling it out of a fridge, condensation forming on the outside. Awesome.

On the side of the track I quickly went through the cache contents and easily made the decision to leave some items behind including a can of Coke, a Gatorade, paper maps, a large bag of scroggin and my rubbish from previous days.

Struggling under the weight of a now way heavy pack I continued for the day in a series of steep up and down eroded 4WD, not as long and Champion Spur but in just as poor a state.

The state of some of the tracks had me swearing my head off but in the end was a lesson in equanimity. Observing my emotional response to the situation at hand I chose to feel it in it’s entirety before calming neutralising it internally with opposing emotions, consciously focusing on the perfect day at hand, the wild flowers around and just the fact that I was outdoors, not at work.

Eventually I made it to Mount McKinty with clear skies and great views across 3 sides. Plenty of time and space to crack a 2nd beer and cook up dinner watching the sun fall below the horizon. This is what the hard yards of ling distance hiking is all about.