The Problem With Randoms

If the answers to this guy’s question do not convince you NOT to ask randoms on the internet for sensible answers to perplexing questions I do not know what will. The OP, who is not a novice, nor inactive, reported:

On arrival at camp, I could not get onto the ground to clear a tent site of stones. Then I had to crawl around in pain through all tendons and muscles of all parts of my legs. Then I could not get back up. Sitting up in my sleeping bag to pee into a bottle gave me terrible cramps in long muscles of my upper legs, akin to a cold sledgehammer. On getting up, I cramped getting out of my sleeping bag - and I could not stand when emerging from the tent. On walking out, I was occasionally pain free …

Last I checked there were in the order of 15 replies, at least 13 of them, forgive my bluntness, are ignorant. One health care provider, suggested the OP do “some squats” to help with hill climbing.

We have all seen the leg day meme, and anyone who has done any serious training or torn up their quads through eccentric loading on steep downhills can sympathise, but electrolyte imbalances, glycogen depletion, hydration, “dietary preparation” – whatever the f**k that is - are all beside the point. Unless the OP pushed himself to the point of rhabdomyolysis, no-one, no matter how fatigued from a (not) particularly long or arduous bushwalk is reduced to crawling unless there is some kind of nerve entrapment. If I were the OP, I would be thinking about a disc issue.

Standard caveats apply, not medical advice, your mileage may vary.

What I’ve been reading:

The Real Dr Fauci, you will never look at that innocuous looking old man the same way again. Fascinating book and I would say recommended reading for people who take advice from randoms.

Inventing The AIDS Virus by the brilliant Peter Duesberg. No excuse not to read this one as you can download it for free. If nothing else, Duesberg should convince the reader that in human biology/physiology the science is never settled.

And, I’ve been out and about, bouldering, climbing, and rambling along our beautiful coastline. The pictures are from the last few days. I’m actually pretty stoked that I sent two hard (for me) boulders today.

Fifty Nine

I turned 59 yesterday. For about 5.9 weeks, I had been mulling over what I would do to mark 59. In my dreams, I would be like Chris Kalous and climb 59 pitches (Kalous of the Enormocast climbed 50 pitches when he turned 50) but I had not climbed in months, could not find 59 unique pitches in close proximity that I could climb even if I was in shape, and climbing the same pitch 59 times would hardly fit the sentiment of the challenge. I also considered walking 59 kilometres, but was pretty sure that would take two days not one, and, while I could have struggled through 59 kilometres in the kayak, I had already achieved such a goal on the Bass Strait crossing – and frankly, didn’t really want to do that again.

In the end, I decided to go for a bushwalk through Murramarang National Park. Looking back at my blog, I have not done the full Durras Mountain, Clear Point, Merry Beach circuit since 2016, although I have been thinking about running the track for the last several rainy weeks. NPWS is working on the track between Pebbly Beach and Dawsons Beach, so the circuit cannot actually be closed at this time, but an out and back walk is still a good trip.

We started from Kioloa and walked rock platforms and boulders around to Merry Beach, and then along a water-logged track past Snapper Point to the campground at Pretty Beach where it took us a little time to find the track. Then it is a straight forward uphill walk to the top of Durras Mountain. There is a very old picnic bench, which somehow survived incineration and a trig station and distant views to the east and west. The best water views are actually obtained when you walk north from Durras Mountain. The rainy weather had finally broken and it was delightful to be out in our local area enjoying nature.

On our return trip we walked from Pretty Beach as far south as O’Hara Island to see how it would be landing a kayak today. Not too bad on the southern side, but a tad messy to the north. Despite many campers at the local caravan parks there was hardly anyone out on the beaches and only one other party on the track.

I actually had a kind of three day birthday celebration because the day before I had gone down to Bingie Bingie Point to do some bouldering. My first real session (not on my home wall) for a long, long time, and I felt clunky, stiff and weak. Getting back into climbing shape after a long, enforced hiatus gets harder each year, but I never seem to lose the determination to at least try. Today, the rock was finally dry and we went out to one of our local crags and managed to lurch our way up a few climbs. Things can only get better from here.

$1.10: Walking Alone, Upstream, Into The Darkness

$1.10. That is how much it costs to take the bus from my home bay south along the coast for a half dozen kilometres. The rain has stopped, so I walk a few minutes down the road and hop the bus. With the addition of myself, there are three people on the bus not counting the driver, and yet, the bus service runs a full size bus along these coastal communities on an hourly schedule. The bus is never full so a mini-bus would suffice and would use a lot less fossil fuels to run. Anyone who still lumbers under the delusion that humans are a rational species would do well to rethink that.

But, I get off the bus at a small bay with a boat ramp. A rough trail runs along cliff tops and beaches back to my home bay. The local council has plans to upgrade the track but these things, particularly when bureaucracy is involved take a long, long time, and Straya, being the perhaps the world capital nanny state will no doubt be compelled to install all kinds of safety barriers, railings, and other corralling devices.

Right now, the track is a rough pathway through bush that requires some scrambling up steep slopes, crossing seasonal creeks, and is generally only used by locals because, without local knowledge a person would never find the track.

After all the rain, the track is streaming with water and the seasonal creeks are running deep and, at mid-tide, the ocean is pushing into little lagoons along the track. I forget completely about keeping my shoes dry and simply wade through creeks and lagoons with my shoes on. About 45 minutes from home, a heavy shower rolls through and I walk the rest of the way home along a bush track with water streaming down my legs and my shorts stuck clammily to my skin.

As I walk, I am pondering the last book I read “Selfie: How We Became So Self Obsessed And WhatIt Is Doing To Us” by Will Storr. The book is an easy read as Storr, a long time journalist and novelist understands that humans grasp the world in stories. Facts and hypotheses, data and statistical significance, do little to move us, but stories capture our imaginations and form the narrative of our lives.

Selfie is not really about narcissism, although, for most of us, that is what the title conjures up. More the book is the story of how culture shapes our individual beliefs and pervades our lives even as we believe ourselves to be rational characters choosing our own individual and unique paths in life. If you have not assimilated the dominant cultural narrative, life can be a little like walking a wet path crisscrossed with deep streams on your way home, a persistent feeling that you are walking alone, upstream, into the darkness.

The Wild Lands Of Namadgi: Mounts Kelly and Burbridge

“Why do they always put the summit at the far end of the ridge?” Doug asks plaintively. We have carried our overnight packs 600 metres up the south ridge of Mount Burbridge through thick regrowth and bouldery terrain and, after propping our packs below a scrambly step on the ridge we are hastening towards the far northern end of the ridge trying to work out which large boulder along the flattish ridge is the top. So far, we have passed two or three possible “summits”, as we scramble off boulders, squeeze through chimneys and scurry under chockstones. Most parties hike up Mount Burbridge from the southwest via Bogong Gap, but, when we tried to traverse into the west fork of Middle Creek at around the 1500 metre contour from the SE ridge of Mount Burbridge we encountered such thick timber that we decided to take our packs up and over the top instead.

Now, however, it is almost 4.00 pm, and we still have to get to the summit, back to our packs and then descend into the open grasslands southwest of Mount Burbridge to find a campsite before darkness arrives. It is the 4^th of April, and we have just “fallen back” as daylight savings ended and neither of us are completely sure what time it gets dark. Stumbling through the thick bush with a heavy pack on steep terrain in the dark is not an activity we are keen on. Low cloud is swirling over the ridge of Mount Burbridge and a cold wind is blowing.

At 4.04 pm, exactly 10 minutes after I said “let’s give it 10 more minutes” we have reached yet another perched boulder, this one marked by a cairn, and looking back, we see that all the “tops” we have passed over have been about the same height. We scramble up lichen covered boulders, shake hands to mark the top, and immediately turn around and begin the trek back to our packs. Near a final gully that we had scrambled up, I pick up my hiking pole that I had left, we find a cairn we had placed, and looking down below one final step we see our packs.

There are granite slabs below us, however, so we have to traverse diagonally down to bypass those before we enter dense stands of thin burnt trees and stumble our way down, tripping on boulders and pushing through thickets of regrowth between burnt trunks until we finally find ourselves on a flat bit of ground under some large gum trees beside a small flowing stream and a fair bit of swampy ground. It is 5.20 pm and we have been walking since 9.30 am, having had only one short break soon after we left Middle Creek and began walking up the southeast ridge of Mount Burbridge.

While Doug levels a campsite and puts up the tent, I scoop water from the creek and set water to boil. Soon, we have a good campsite, our hands wrapped around a rich cup of hot chocolate, and all our extra clothes on as the sun sets, the dew begins and we cool as rapidly as the surrounding air.

In a direct line, we are only about five kilometres from the end of the faint footpad that is Middle Creek fire-trail, but, that five kilometres might as well be fifty for the time and effort required to arrive at this location. Bushwacking in Australia is not for the timid or those not willing to work hard. Average travel time, regardless of age, gender, pack weight, seems to be between one and two kilometres per hour, and, unlike Canada, which has its own brand of desperate bushwacking, one never really arrives in “alpine terrain” in Australia where walking is clear and easy. Sometimes, the tops of mountains, spiky with large granite boulders have some of the thickest bush to navigate.

We eat dinner in the dark and crawl into bed. Our new sleeping bags, bought within the past year, have lofted up luxuriously and we sleep soundly and well. I crawl out of the tent once in the night to a dark sky filled with a panoply of stars. Early next morning, before sunrise, I get out of the tent again and brew up coffee which we drink in bed, a treat on a dark morning when the ground is cloaked with light frost.

It is hard to get excited about more bushwacking on this trip but the idea of walking back out without tagging Mount Kelly now that we have thrashed this far in (and have no option but thrashing back out) seems worse than the prospect of additional thrashing.

Although the return distance to Mount Kelly is only about five kilometres we think we will be lucky to be back at the tent within four hours. We pack a day pack and walk up to Bogong Gap and then using a rough compass bearing we walk through more bush to arrive at the saddle southeast of Mount Kelly where we find a cairn marking where Sams Fire Trail – completely indistinguishable from the surrounding bush – crosses (or used to cross) into Rotten Swamp.

Scrambling up Mount Kelly is easy apart from one band of very thick small burnt trees which we stumble through on, coincidentally, the steepest part of the ridge. On the summit, it is calm and sunny, a dramatic change from the day before, and we enjoy a half hour break savouring the view and identifying the other granite topped summits in the area.

We make it back to the tent in just over three hours, so brew up a cup of tea and have some lunch before packing up our gear and beginning the long bash out to the car. After studying the map we have decided to walk down the creek for about a kilometre where a 40 to 50 metre uphill walk on will put us back on our ascent route and the southeast ridge of Mount Burbridge. This turns out to be reasonably easy going on faint animal tracks until the uphill section which runs through fallen trees stacked like pick-up sticks everywhere.

It takes a few hours, and a lot of patience, to walk down the ridge as it seems harder on the way down than the way up to find any kind of lead through the timber and we encounter some very thick sections – most often on the steepest part of the ridge – where descending is more like half-controlled falling than actually walking. Finally, we reach the split in Middle Creek and cross on boulders, walk another few hundred metres and find the very faint end of Middle Creek fire trail.

A last short break on a flat boulder and then walking the faint foot pad out to the car past mobs of kangaroos as the early evening light slants across the valley. Another magical Namadgi trip into the wild lands beyond the cleared and tamed river valleys. These mountains do not give up their joys easily.

After The Storm

The peak of the east coast low was Saturday down here on the south coast. The wave buoy off North Head peaked at 13 metres with an average wave height of 5 to 6 metres and winds off-shore were near 50 knots. It was definitely a day for heading out to some of the local lookouts, beaches and tracks for some storm watching.

At our home beach, the tide had run right through the parking lot and the swell was smashing onto the shore.

Next stop was Mosquito Bay as we were both curious to see what the reefs between the shore and Black Rock looked like remembering the day we had paddled north from Guerilla Bay with Nick. With a swell at about half the size we had been forced out around Black Rock to get past a string of breaking reefs. Today, the waves were so high they were leaping right over Black Rock and the strong SW wind was blowing the spray off the crests.

On to Pretty Point, where we could look north to Malua Bay and south to Jimmies Island. Quite a sight with about 800 metres of continuous whitewater into the beaches. The rain was like hard pellets driven by strong winds.

Passing Mckenzies Beach, no surfers out and no beach left even though high tide was still two hours away. Most impressive of all was the loop walk around Burrewarra Point where we could see almost the entire expanse of Broulee Bay had closed out. All the slots and caves we usually paddle into were buried in foam, and impressive wave faces were rolling in, plumes of spray blowing off the tops.

Coming home via Caseys and Corrigans Beaches, normally very sheltered inside the bay and there were surfers at Corrigans Beach and one lone surfer trying to ride the swell at Caseys Beach without getting smashed against the breakwall. The storm surge had been right across Surf Beach road.

Strolling around today, the day after the storm, the water is brown with soil raked off the backs of beaches, themselves stripped off soil. Seaweed is piled as tall as me on our home beach and on the rock platforms it is obvious that yesterdays swell reached about 4 metres up the steep banks behind the platforms.