Wamban Mountain

I have just finished the trail run that keeps on giving right until the end, Wamban trig/mountain from Little Sugarloaf Road in Deau National Park is a solid 19 km and just under 1200 metre gain round trip that goes up and down, up and down, up and down. The last kilometre when you are getting foot weary, there is one final steep down and up to cross the last creek and hike up the last ridge.

There is actually no track to the top of Wamban Mountain so you have to bushwack the final kilometre and 300 metre gain, but the bush is light and I had an almost track, almost all the way. Animals I guess as there was no foot pad, but the bush was pressed down just wide enough for me to see my feet and not stumble and stutter too much over the loose rock, fallen trees, and vines underfoot. I allowed an hour for this final bit but managed to reach the trig on top in half that time.

The views are filtered but you get a sense of deep and steep river valleys and in some places you can see out to the ocean. I occasionally think I should put these runs up on the FKT website as I suspect no-one else is doing them and even at my sluggish pace I could rack up a (meaningless) FKT.

But I don't really care enough for all that palaver. I go out and do these things because I like the challenge (pretty minor really) not because I need a FKT to prove my worth as a human. FKT's are funny things as I think it often depends on how deep the talent pool is whether or not people are really fast or just big fish in small ponds.

However, another two weeks of lockdown have passed and I have to look back at my log to see what I actually did. A bunch of power workouts, some route endurance training on my home wall, four days out rock climbing, heck, I even went out for a paddle as I have relaunched the Sunday paddles, albeit with a limit of five.

Great conditions yesterday for a paddle south of our local bay; that is if you like a lumpy two metre swell with brisk winds. We had some great down wind rides on runners, but, as usual, you had to work for them. It was somewhat comforting to see that even Splashalot was getting winded paddling hard to catch the swells.