Conondale Range Great Walk

[ULWalkingPhil]

G'day all,
anybody want to do the 4 day circuit at the start of the June School Holidays? Starting Saturday 28th. Show those leaches who's boss.

Chris K

I might be interested, how many in the party?

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[Jayps68]

Artists Cascades, Booloumba, Peters and Summer Falls were all running well. Very few of the many little creeks were running at all. Very dry. Will go and do it again one day when it is wet again, enjoy the wetter environment and many leeches it brings.

Evidence of feral pigs and a cow in places.

You propbably will encounter pigs, particularly on the fire trails on day 2. I've spotted them from afar through the scrub, and on one occasion at about the 700m mark on day 2 had two small black burst through the undergrowth on the side of the trails to root around in the mud wall. They were only piglets though..., god knows, and i dont really care where mum was, as long as she was far off.

This is a great track, with a good mix of terain and scrub. I would recommend this walk for anyone training for longer multi's. Do it in winter. Pack your food away carefully as well and take good care of the scraps the mice at tallowood are pretty busy, and bold.

[Gadgetgeek]

Did anyone end up going? I'll be heading in tomorrow morning to do three days with a bunch of guys from my church. Should be a good one.

[ULWalkingPhil]

Make sure your rugged up, its cold, I just returned from the area, it got down to -4 this morning.

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[Gadgetgeek]

yeah, I had to bust out the AMK bivy to get through last night. Thats what I deserve for taking untested gear. not too bad though, I wasn't at risk of hypothermia at all and now I have one more reason to get the underquilt project happening. We clipped tallow wood, and did the cross track from Wongai (which was packed out) passed tallowwood and up to summer falls for the night. pretty solid day. I took a tumble on a log crossing (lots of logs over the tracks) and dinged my knee, this morning on the long climb out of summer falls it went ugly so it was a slow walk into the parking lot. Still managed to do it in about 5 hours which is pretty good considering how slow I was moving. I'll definitely be doing the track again, and I did not bad with a 14kg load out and very minimal training, most of the other guys had really crappy packs (lots of "travel" hikers from the last anaconda sale) but every one did pretty solidly considering. So I would say that while parts of it are quite tough. as long as you are getting an early start, there should be plenty of daylight to get to where you want to go. Plus if you do booloumba to Wongai and its all gone wrong, you have a good option to call in a pick-up from there. I would say if you can hack day one, the rest is pretty similar.

[ULWalkingPhil]

Its normally a lot warmer at those three camp sites on the great walk. Its much colder down at the base of the mountain.

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[ULWalkingPhil]

Its very entertaining at times watching those bushwalkers with there huge overweight packs trodding along the track. I get some concerned looks, people ask me, do I have a tent in there?
Lol. I get a bit sick of having people question me, because of my small pack size.

You can see there jews drop when a pull out all my gear at camp and start baking.

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[Gadgetgeek]

I'll bet! I need to do much more endurance training, I had thought that by keeping my pack weight as low as I could, I'd be able to help any one else that had over packed, but it just didn't work out that way, but good that it was as light as it was. The upshot is that I know what I need to do now, and a combination of trimming pack weight (no more 1 kg sleeping bag) and better training, and things will go much better. I would have liked to have a wider performance envelope as it were. Everything worked out, and I was able to finish, but one more thing going wrong, and I would have had much more trouble. Worst case would just be the heckling from the other guys when they came back to get me, no real danger involved. I would say, all in all, a good learning experience for me. lots of mistakes made that I can correct in future.

Didn't take too many snaps, and not sure why the camera decided it needed the flash, but interesting lighting, makes it look spooky I think.