Daily distance: 22.4km
Total distance: 866.1km
A very, very cold night with hectic winds and lots of rain. The wind was so strong at stages last night the door blew open, so we moved the fire extinguisher in front of it to try stop it, which did the trick. If anybody had come into the hut last night all they would have seen of the two of us would have been our noses. We had our sleeping bags up to our eye ball's with hoods drawn tight.
This morning was heavielly overcast but the rain had abated for awhile, so we packed up as quick as possible, put everything waterproof we had on, and shot out the door. A kilometer later we got stopped in our tracks, by a stream the trail took us over, that was in full spat. Shoes off and through we went, no way round. To tell you it was cold would be funny, it was so cold my little toes went inverted!
Well, this was the name of the game for the rest of the day. Every stream we came to was over flowing so we had to either, jump, wade, skip, swim or use Dee as a spring board, to get across. It was also a very tough day with a huge amount of ups and downs. Everytime we got to the top of one crest, we would see another higher one just across the valley and thats exactly where the trail took us.... over all of them. The rain feel continuously the whole day so it was not long before we were soaked, so stopping was not an option. As we got to the last peak before descending to the flat lands, down came the sleet.... yip sleet. I haven't seen sleet since I was on Marion Island and then I had long pants on........
Twenty minutes later the sleet was still coming down but we were half way down the mountain. Stumbling along looking for the trail, through all the hoodies I had on, I heard a babbler calling. To Dee's total amazement I started spishing and out came 4 or 5 White-browed Babblers. Lifer!!!!
Reaching the bottom we came into the Stony Creek Campsite, which was partially under water, had a look and carried on towards Wilmington. Two hours later we reached the Main North Road and the Wilmington Caravan Park where we now are watching the TV and drinking warm coffee.
I apologise for the lack of photos from today but it was just to wet and cold to keep taking gloves off to get pictures. Anyway too many pictures of rain would make you all depressed. You will also notice on the photo of the stats that the walking time was something horrendous. Well I forgot to switch it off when we got here so it's a bit longer than the actual walk was. However the ascent and descent should tell you our story ...... Until the sun shines.......
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