Overland - keen to share prep notes

[Spiky]

We're a couple of reasonably fit 40/50-somethings who have booked to walk the Overland towards the end of March.

I'd be interested in sharing notes/preparation with any other 'first-timers' who are of a similar sort of age. I'd be particularly keen to meet up with anyone around the Newcastle/Hunter Valley area who would be keen to share fitness preparation etc.

Cheers,

Chris

[weeds]

Hi Chris

Does a pair of 45yo's count

Wendy and I just completed the OLT in December, we had done just one night prior in our tent and a three night hut walk.

We did 8 days, how many days are you planning??
Ensured our travel arrangement meant we could start the walk at 8am
We pretty much took the recommended gear....I could have left the fleece at home, I didn't use the rain pants even though it rained
Take cup hooks for the tent platforms....way easier to set tents up
We did 2-3 packs walks each week for a month prior with about 10kg, we should have bumped this up as our starting weight was ~20kg
We over catered with food, didn't go hungry and didn't eat it all.
I have a spread sheet with our travel and walk itinerary I'm happy to share
We did a couple of long days, the legs were feeling it
A possum chewed a hole in our tent at Windermere....even though we secured all our food deep in our pack, from than on we left pack in huts and slept in tents
Consider walking out, we were glad we did this, Echo Hit is a cool little place to spend the last night.
Plan for snow, we had it in December, actually we didn't plan anything extra, it was cool renting it in the snow.

Post up or PM questions, happy to answer from a beginners point of view

[Spiky]

Ha, yes - perfect!

We're planning to just do the 'basic' walk, so 6 days/5 nights. It was only after we'd committed and made the bookings that we started to think we may need longer, but we'll save that for another time. We agonized for weeks over the start time, but feel that the first day is pretty achievable with a 12.30pm start time, which is what we predict from the way our travel has subsequently been organised.

We've trying really hard to watch the weight we're carrying, so are planning to carry not much more than 14/16kg each....although that may be wishful thinking. Like you, we've only tried one night in the tent to date (New Years Eve on Mt Kosciusko) but it all seemed to go OK. Interesting what you say about the food....we're accumulating a few 'Back Country Cuisine' packets (although we've not been game to try one yet), but I'd prefer not to live on the stuff. What sort of cooker did you use? We've got a Trangia, but I still can't quite work out how much fuel we need to take. My calculations range between 1 - 2 litres, but anything I don't have to carry unnecessarily is a bonus!

I'll send you a pm with my email address on it - anything that you'd be happy to share would be a real help.

Chris.

[weeds]

Re: cooking, we used two gas coolers and neither cylinder was empty at the end. Carried a 3rd cylinder just in case. That's was for cooking three meals at night, at least one oats each morning and 2 cups of tea each day.

Had a chat to two guys at echo hut that were using the fuel burners, both had a 1L bottle which looked to be about 1/4 full each. I have had no experience with this gear.

Re: food, an area we need to get more creative.

Dinners, we ordered Strive dehydrated for evening meals, I had spag bol every night which got boring after the 3rd night.

Breakfast was either oats/powered milk/dried fruit or clusters/powered milk/dried fruit pre made in zip loc bags. I had cluster six mornings and oats one morning

In between, we normally stopped twice each day. I had a salami stick and cheese stick in a wrap/flat bread one stop and a cheese stick and vegemite on the other stop. Also had a bag of groggin. I had maybe 4 cup a soups over the eight days.

Desert, chocolate

Eight days of food and 2L water does add up pretty quickly

Send us your email....

[Ant71]

Hi Chris my wife and I are 45 and completed the track in September. It was our first multi night hike. We were doing about 3 10km walks a week for about 3 months before we went. We would walk from the foreshore to Merewether baths and back once or twice a week or from our house down to Glenrock. We found the going a lot harder on the OLT and found it took us about twice as long to cover the same distance. We drove our car down and left it at Lake St Clair and got transported to the start so we knew we wouldn't miss our lift. We took back country food a double serving and a dessert between us for dinner and they were not to bad. We just had Muesli bars for breakfast and Vita wheats for lunch. We just did the basic track no side trips we had planned to walk around Lake St Clair but my wife's feet were badly blistered so we caught the fairy out and we spent 5 days on the track. Our packs were about 20kg with no water I think we could cut that down if we did it again.
If there is anything else you would like to know pm me and I would be happy to help and if you wanted to catch up for a coffee and a chat we could do that to.

[mark electric]

A possum chewed a hole in our tent at Windermere....even though we secured all our food deep in our pack, from than on we left pack in huts and slept in tents

Same here, Windermere, A possum chewed a hole in my tent & kept coming back.

[gooddroprob]

Hello

My family and I have just returned from Tasmania after walking the Overland Track. My wife and I are in our late 40's. I exercise a fair bit, but she doesn't, yet she managed the walk without any real trouble. We spent 10 nights out as we stayed (for free) at Scott Kilvert Hut for two nights before beginning our walk.

Just in regard to food, we took 10 bags of Barilla Three Cheese Tortellini and accompanied that each night with different dehydrated 'sauces' along with some parmesan cheese. My wife cooked things like spaghetti bolognese and tuna mornay, then dehydrated them in a cheap Lumina dehydrator beforehand. We just added some water around lunch-time each day and it was ready to be heated up that night with the pasta. I imagine our meals were a lot tastier than the Back Country type and certainly cheaper. Next time we will use a stronger 'hydrating bag' as dried mince tends to be sharp and can pierce plastic, which is messy. On this trip we just ended up double bagging the sauces and let them hydrate in the top of our pack.

Finally, to reduce fuel, we often poured boiling water over the pasta, then placed the pot, with its lid on, into a foil pot cosy for about ten minutes. The pasta softened and kept nice and hot. My wife made the cosy using a cheap windscreen protector. Over 10 days, feeding a family of four, we used just over a litre of shellite.

Enjoy your walk!

[Spiky]

Re: cooking, we used two gas coolers and neither cylinder was empty at the end. Carried a 3rd cylinder just in case. That's was for cooking three meals at night, at least one oats each morning and 2 cups of tea each day.

Had a chat to two guys at echo hut that were using the fuel burners, both had a 1L bottle which looked to be about 1/4 full each. I have had no experience with this gear.

Re: food, an area we need to get more creative.

Dinners, we ordered Strive dehydrated for evening meals, I had spag bol every night which got boring after the 3rd night.

Breakfast was either oats/powered milk/dried fruit or clusters/powered milk/dried fruit pre made in zip loc bags. I had cluster six mornings and oats one morning

In between, we normally stopped twice each day. I had a salami stick and cheese stick in a wrap/flat bread one stop and a cheese stick and vegemite on the other stop. Also had a bag of groggin. I had maybe 4 cup a soups over the eight days.

Desert, chocolate

Eight days of food and 2L water does add up pretty quickly

Send us your email....

That's gutsy play re the spag bol - I think I'd have starved mid-hike if that was all I had to go at!

We've currently got an old Trangia, but I'm cooling on the whole idea of cooking this way, and looking at a Jetboil. Presuming that this is a similar thing to what you were using, what size cylinders were you carrying? I notice there's a few different sizes.

What did you use for water purification?

[Spiky]

Hi Chris my wife and I are 45 and completed the track in September. It was our first multi night hike. We were doing about 3 10km walks a week for about 3 months before we went. We would walk from the foreshore to Merewether baths and back once or twice a week or from our house down to Glenrock. We found the going a lot harder on the OLT and found it took us about twice as long to cover the same distance. We drove our car down and left it at Lake St Clair and got transported to the start so we knew we wouldn't miss our lift. We took back country food a double serving and a dessert between us for dinner and they were not to bad. We just had Muesli bars for breakfast and Vita wheats for lunch. We just did the basic track no side trips we had planned to walk around Lake St Clair but my wife's feet were badly blistered so we caught the fairy out and we spent 5 days on the track. Our packs were about 20kg with no water I think we could cut that down if we did it again.
If there is anything else you would like to know pm me and I would be happy to help and if you wanted to catch up for a coffee and a chat we could do that to.

I certainly will, once the area has cooled down a bit!

Couple of quick questions in the meantime: what cooker type/brand did you use, and how did you filter/purify water?

[weeds]

Re: cooking, we used two gas coolers and neither cylinder was empty at the end. Carried a 3rd cylinder just in case. That's was for cooking three meals at night, at least one oats each morning and 2 cups of tea each day.

Had a chat to two guys at echo hut that were using the fuel burners, both had a 1L bottle which looked to be about 1/4 full each. I have had no experience with this gear.

Re: food, an area we need to get more creative.

Dinners, we ordered Strive dehydrated for evening meals, I had spag bol every night which got boring after the 3rd night.

Breakfast was either oats/powered milk/dried fruit or clusters/powered milk/dried fruit pre made in zip loc bags. I had cluster six mornings and oats one morning

In between, we normally stopped twice each day. I had a salami stick and cheese stick in a wrap/flat bread one stop and a cheese stick and vegemite on the other stop. Also had a bag of groggin. I had maybe 4 cup a soups over the eight days.

Desert, chocolate

Eight days of food and 2L water does add up pretty quickly

Send us your email....

That's gutsy play re the spag bol - I think I'd have starved mid-hike if that was all I had to go at!

We've currently got an old Trangia, but I'm cooling on the whole idea of cooking this way, and looking at a Jetboil. Presuming that this is a similar thing to what you were using, what size cylinders were you carrying? I notice there's a few different sizes.

What did you use for water purification?

330g I think they are

Yep two gas cooker, one is MSR I think, not sure of the other brand, one simmers better than the other.

We don need to get a wind shield.

[Ant71]

Hi Chris my wife and I are 45 and completed the track in September. It was our first multi night hike. We were doing about 3 10km walks a week for about 3 months before we went. We would walk from the foreshore to Merewether baths and back once or twice a week or from our house down to Glenrock. We found the going a lot harder on the OLT and found it took us about twice as long to cover the same distance. We drove our car down and left it at Lake St Clair and got transported to the start so we knew we wouldn't miss our lift. We took back country food a double serving and a dessert between us for dinner and they were not to bad. We just had Muesli bars for breakfast and Vita wheats for lunch. We just did the basic track no side trips we had planned to walk around Lake St Clair but my wife's feet were badly blistered so we caught the fairy out and we spent 5 days on the track. Our packs were about 20kg with no water I think we could cut that down if we did it again.
If there is anything else you would like to know pm me and I would be happy to help and if you wanted to catch up for a coffee and a chat we could do that to.

I certainly will, once the area has cooled down a bit!

Couple of quick questions in the meantime: what cooker type/brand did you use, and how did you filter/purify water?

Hi Chris My mum gave me a small cooker I think it is from Aldi it came with a pot and lid and a gas canister fits inside with the little stove I was a bit worried how it would go but it was great we took two gas canisters but we didn't use a full one. We had a water bottle each with a filter in it that we got from Katmandu and we had a 2 litter bladder each we filled each up in the morning at the hut from the water tank we didn't bother with filtering the water and I would have been happy drinking from any of the streams while we were there. Hope that helps

[weeds]

We took water tablets but didn't used them.....drunk water from the streams and tanks. Wendy may have only drank tank water

[Spiky]

Take cup hooks for the tent platforms....way easier to set tents up
We did 2-3 packs walks each week for a month prior with about 10kg, we should have bumped this up as our starting weight was ~20kg
We over catered with food, didn't go hungry and didn't eat it all.
I have a spread sheet with our travel and walk itinerary I'm happy to share

I'm curious about the 'cup hooks'. I've heard of people recommending that we take lengths of rope to tie the tent onto the bases, but I've not heard of using cup hooks. Are you screwing them in, or looping them around something?

I've already started the walks with 10kg+ (Heaton's Gap is quite character-building) so hoping to be fit!

Incidentally, I sent you a pm with my email address...did you get it?

[gayet]

I'm curious about the 'cup hooks'. I've heard of people recommending that we take lengths of rope to tie the tent onto the bases, but I've not heard of using cup hooks. Are you screwing them in, or looping them around something?

I've already started the walks with 10kg+ (Heaton's Gap is quite character-building) so hoping to be fit!

......

Screw cup hooks in between the planks on the platforms, at appropriate points then use them as you would a tent peg; guy line over the hook and tighten. Unscrew the cup hook rather than pull it out - less damage to the planking then.

[weeds]

Take cup hooks for the tent platforms....way easier to set tents up
We did 2-3 packs walks each week for a month prior with about 10kg, we should have bumped this up as our starting weight was ~20kg
We over catered with food, didn't go hungry and didn't eat it all.
I have a spread sheet with our travel and walk itinerary I'm happy to share

I'm curious about the 'cup hooks'. I've heard of people recommending that we take lengths of rope to tie the tent onto the bases, but I've not heard of using cup hooks. Are you screwing them in, or looping them around something?

I've already started the walks with 10kg+ (Heaton's Gap is quite character-building) so hoping to be fit!

Incidentally, I sent you a pm with my email address...did you get it?

Didn't receive PM....

Cup looks are mentioned heaps but we sore no evidence of the being used and didn't noticed anybody using them.

19mm cup hooks worked well for us.....

The chain and wire ropes installed on the platforms are next to useless, the nails/hooks out the outside a good....each night we only needed 4 maybe 5 hooks, sometimes less. After you unscrew the hook you can barely tell it's been in there......it's would be difficult to screw them between the planks...either way I used them sparingly.

We didn't take any extra string, for our tents it wasn't needed.

[Spiky]

Thanks. I've had another go!

[Ant71]

We took about 20m of tent cord and we didn't take any cup hooks we had no problems with the tent. Ours is a small 2man tunnel style tent.

[lseries92]

Just finished the Overland last week and wanted to thank weeds for his suggestion of taking cup hooks. We found them very handy - I highly recommend taking them as it made tent setup a breeze. I gave a few of mine to other people on the track that also found them useful so weeds probably has some more converts out there now