Split Rock for Christmas 2025

Christmas Day 2025 and, as usual, we are in the middle of a paddling training cycle, so I felt an extra bit of delight when I saw that the weather would be sunny but cool (overnight lows near zero) around Namadgi National Park. That meant, instead of doing an overnight paddle (I get weary of paddling during long training cycles) we could do something different and go for an overnight walk.

Namadgi National Park has become one of our go-to bushwalking locations. The driving, as driving goes, is pretty painless. Just a bit over two hours on good roads and we can circumvent most of Canberra. The bush is a bit less dense for whacking than around the Budawangs which has gotten really ferocious since the fires, there is always a peak to bushwack up, pretty good camping, water, and the new bonus, no ticks!

In all the walks I’ve done around Namadgi National Park, I’ve never driven up the Orroral Valley to the site of the old tracking station. The interpretive signage around the picnic area (on the site of the old tracking station) certainly highlights how much technology has changed in the last few decades.

The Cotter Hut road runs north and climbs steadily to Prairie Dog Creek. It’s not particularly pleasant walking as the road is hard underfoot, but after 5 or 6 kilometres the Australian Alps Waking Track (AAWT) splits off and head west descending a short distance to Sawpit Creek and then climbing about 200 metres to Cotter Gap. The last time we walked in to Cotter Gap we had come from Honeysuckle Campground on the far (NE) side of Legoland Ridge. That day, three years ago, we covered 20 kilometres and accumulated 900 metres of elevation gain on the first day of a three day trip, but, I’m not sure it felt any harder than the relatively modest 12 kilometres and roughly 600 metres of gain we did on Christmas Day. It turns out that walking up and down steep climbing trails with a climbing pack probably does keep you somewhat fit for backpacking.

About a kilometre downhill from Cotter Gap the track crosses the start of Pond Creek and there are a few good campsites scattered in the forest. We opted for the best one, just off the track and set among a couple of large boulders with a grassy open tent area. I think this is a better camp than we had three years previously when we camped down at Pond Creek Flats. If you are continuing west to the Bimberi Range there are unlimited good campsites down at the Cotter River Valley only a couple of kilometres downhill from Pond Creek Flats.

It was definitely time for tea and lunch. We had our new Primus canister stove with us, an upgrade from the last cheapo model which started to leak irreparably last year. With a wind guard, it was very quick to boil water. Another piece of technology which has improved a lot of the last couple of decades and, even I now think, is a reasonable replacement for the trusted liquid fuel MSR stoves that we used for decades. The beauty of MSR liquid fuel stoves, of course, was their ability to burn any fuel (including diesel or kerosene – both very stinky) and the repair them in the field if you had the parts, and you could always buy the parts. The downside, of course, is the fuss and bother of priming them and the fact that in recent years the spare parts have become as costly as a new stove.

Anyway, after tea and lunch we stashed our spare gear under a rock and set off for Split Rock. Split Rock is not named on the map but if you are at Pond Creek and look south you can’t miss it. Two tall granite tors on the ridge above. The bush was rather thick! It took us almost 1.5 hours to gain just under 300 metres in elevation over the kilometre or so to the top. That’s not fast! Near the top, you have to scramble around some big boulders but the split tors are pretty obvious and you can walk right through them. If these tors were more accessible, and had some bolts, they would provide fantastic climbing as the granite is really clean, featured and solid! I could not find any evidence on the internet of anyone climbing to the top but lots of things don’t make it onto the internet.

There is a rock balcony overlooking the two tors and the valley below and we sat here for a bit admiring the view. An hour down and back to camp. We took a slightly different route of the top which was more than slightly worse than the way up!

We had frost overnight which is an interesting concept in Australia in late December. The next day we had planned to walk further west along the AAWT and bushwack up Coronet Peak. But ideas made in the comfort of ones home don’t always translate to actions in the field. Our legs had felt tired and stiff the previous evening and, disappointingly, you have to lose 200 metres of elevation to get to the base of the bushwack up Coronet Peak. Two hundred metres which we would have to regain on the way out and Coronet Peak is 100 metres lower than Split Rock!

When we made coffee in the morning, which I enjoyed in the tent, we decided against Coronet Peak. After all, it was Christmas. Accordingly, we had two big mugs of coffee in the morning before packing up and walking out. Just before the Cotter Hut road crosses James Creek, we took an old vehicle track down to the trail that runs north up the Orroral River valley. This is pleasant open walking with views up and down the valley and much softer on the feet than the Cotter Hut road. Where the track joins the Link Track which comes over from Honeysuckle campground, I walked across open grasslands back to the picnic area while Doug followed the old roads. More tea and lunch at the picnic ground. We encountered a surprising number of people walking into Bimberi Peak from the east. I had though most folk would go in from the west (Pocket Saddle Road) which is much shorter and easily day tripped.

Another good Namadgi trip and, although we did not climb two peaks as planned, we now have a reason to go back.

That Speed Graph

I made the mistake of looking at my watch. The news was not good. Our speed had been gradually dropping, and, as we paddled past Jimmies Island to Burrewarra Point and bashed into a developing sea, a southerly swell, and a building wind, our average speed was around five kilometres an hour! Yikes. After two hours of paddling we turned around and our speed immediately doubled!

A super fun run back catching lots of runners. We took a break on Lilli Pilli beach ‘cos I was running out of gas. It’s not often that training days as this much fun.

The Perpetual Panic

We were supposed to paddle out to Montague Island today for my usual Sunday paddle, instead we ambled down the coast to Jimmies Island and did about 21 kilometres (not that much less than a Montague Island circumnavigation trip) and shot some video of our forward strokes. I cancelled the Montague Island trip at the last moment because the BOM weather page had activated the panic warning. This time for large hail, thunderstorms, flash flooding and violent storms. We did get a storm on Saturday evening which lasted for a couple of hours and dropped a mere, but very welcome, 20 mm of rain. There was lots of thunder, no hail and little wind, but it did rain, which I guess, in the new reality is cause for panic.

The new BOM website, that cost us all up about $100 million, always has a panic alert. I don’t remember this from the old website, but perhaps for a $100 million you get an unlimited number of panic alerts. We’ve had about five heat wave alerts already this summer and the temperature has barely cracked 30 degrees Celsius. In summer, in Australia. I did my first rolling practice day on Friday because it was the first day it was actually warm enough to spend a reasonable amount of time upside down in a kayak without having to put a full wet-suit on. As an aside, I could roll. What joy. Each summer, after a winter of not rolling, I wonder if I’ll still be able to roll.

Anyway, we got a light spittle of rain today, but no thunder, no wind, no hail, no flash flooding, nothing. But, not to worry, the BOM website still managed to crank out two warnings for us today: a heat wave warning – our high temperature today was 24 degrees Celsius – and a strong wind warning – the maximum wind speed today at Montague Island was 10 knots. Whew, I’m glad I panicked.

Death in the Jungle

There’s a fine line between salvation and drinking poison in the jungle. Mark Twight.

Mark Twight coined this evocative phrase in his Gym Jones days when training high level athletes for dangerous pursuits. The answer or attribute that we seek is, in one environment a panacea and, in another a death wish. This is where the left is now. Stuck between solutions and judgements, with nowhere to go, and no ability to course correct.

When you join the cult, you must accept all the edicts of the cult, sometimes, as in the case of Jonestown, to the detriment of your own life, at other times to the detriment of the lives of others. After two years of weekly protests at a cost, in excess of $25 million in Melbourne alone, Australia has had it’s worst gun massacre since Port Arthur in 1996. Social cohesion, in this primarily multi-cultural society is looking a little ragged around the edges. More laws are coming, more sanctions on what people can and can’t say, more attempts to hold together disparate groups that, if history bears any witness, may be hard to hold together.

The left, who gaslit us after the Covid pandemic by claiming no-one was forced to get a vaccination, who promote medical and surgical castration as a cure for the social contagion of gender dysphoria, now want us to believe that no-one was radicalised by weekly marches behind banners decrying a genocide. “The two gunmen …. did not march for peace,” a leftist writer claimed in The Shot even though, earlier this year, the ABC uncovered evidence that radicals were using the marches to find recruits. Emotional people in large crowds are ripe for conversion, something we should all remember from the Billy Graham years.

No-one is responsible for these killings except the two men who shot the bullets but it is disingenuous of the left to pretend that hundreds of rallies over the course of multiple years encompassing Australia’s most populous cities did not influence anyone. The modern left offers atheists the salvation of religion free morality, the ethical high ground on all issues, and the heady euphoria of universal empathy. You just have to be careful what you believe because, before you realise it, the chalice has been poisoned and you are dying in a jungle of your own construction.

Just Your Average Week

It used to be a thing that people took one full rest day per week, which from an evolutionary perspective never made sense to me as that would be a day that, in pre-modern times, you went hungry because you didn’t go out to forage for food. My tendency, like that of Will Gadd, is to do something every day. The specifics matter less than the movement, with the caveat that old people need to lift weights. Real weights, not poncing around in a pool doing aquarobics or picking up one kilogram dumbbells to curl.

After our last long paddle day, I was really tired and I took a full rest day! It was really strange to get up on Friday and feel fit and strong with no lingering fatigue or sore muscles. So, I did hills and I felt like I bounded up the track to the top of the ridge. I probably didn’t but I felt like it, and, of course, I felt so good I did some power training when I got home.

On Saturday, I thought I would do my fast paddle day. This varies a lot depending on how I feel. Sometimes I feel super energetic and I do 12 or so kilometres at an 8 kilometre/hour pace, sometimes I substitute a downwind run which requires a hard upwind paddle followed by a series of sprints to catch waves. And, some days, like Saturday, I get out there and it all feels really hard and I have to admit that today is not the day to push hard because I’ll dig a big fatigue hole that will take days to climb out of which is days of quality training lost. In the end, I was only out for half an hour and it was hard work to get my speed up.

Sunday, of course, is paddle day. I’ll admit I get a bit bored with the go north or go south narrative that features during training periods, so on Sunday we did some skills practice, a rescue scenario, and some surfing on the Clyde River bar. Online Sea Kayaking is a really excellent resource for people trying to improve their kayaking and is inexpensive if you consider how much content is available. We did a few drills that I unashamedly copied from the website which was a good learning experience for all of us. Some of these drills look so easy but they can be quite tricky. Then it was on to the bar for some surfing. Conditions were excellent. The swell was pretty much due east, exactly perfect for the bar which has recently been dredged. We had one capsize where a pair of sunglasses were lost but the “victim” was in shallow water and easily self-rescued. I had my helmet on, probably not strictly required but the helmet does keep your sunglasses on! Finally, a slightly complicated rescue (a tow off rocks followed by a deep water rescue using a stirrup) and some rolls to round out the day. Most fun I have had for a long time on the Sunday paddle.

When I was in Sydney the past weekend I dropped into the Climbfit gym in Kirrawee and was shocked at how weak I was climbing. Of course, I shouldn’t be shocked as I have only climbed a few times since my tick attack and, with training for Tasmania taking up so much time and energy, I haven’t even been on our climbing wall much. So, Monday was overcast and only hitting highs of the low 20’s (Celsius) so we went climbing which was lots and lots of fun. Much more fun than banging out another 40 kilometre day which we did the day after.

Training is Easy, Recovering is Hard: 41 Kilometres

I’ve given up looking at my watch. I don’t want to know how fast (or slow) we are going or how far we have come because neither number will be what I want to see. On the south side of Broulee Island, at the locally named “Shark Bay” (I’ve never seen a shark there) where we land, our distance is only 18.5 kilometres. Not even half way. We either have to paddle south for 1.5 kilometres (all beach) or we can lap around Broulee Bay past Mossy Point and Tomakin and hopefully pick up the required kilometres there.

It started easily enough. A fairly low swell and almost glassy conditions with enough cloud cover to reduce the temperature a bit. We had company from Lilli Pilli to Pretty Point because a fellow kayaker had seen us paddling past and came out to join us. Someone different to talk to for half an hour and a minor distraction to the long day in your head. But, by the time we left Shark Bay, the easterly wind had picked up and we paddled against the wind out to Burrewarra Point. The glassy conditions were replaced by clapotis all the way north. Annoying, lumpy, bumpy, spiky water that made the paddling seem harder than it should.

There is a small beach just south of McKenzies Beach, accessible only by walking track from Rosedale where we land for a second break. I’ve only eaten half an egg roll and hope that a bit more food will help with the fatigue. And tea, tea always picks me up and the tea is good. The last ten kilometres took an hour and a half. Of course, we were against the northerly current and there was clapotis all the way. I was punch drunk tired by the time we finished but there was no way I was going to quit.  I'm the double down person that Bechtel's writes about in Contingencies.  

Undulations

Our mountain bike tracks are mostly up – down – up – down – up – down, which is probably great for the shuttlers (not a word I know but I mean the people who ride down and get in a vehicle for the trip up) and E-bike riders, but sometimes I would like to ride a track that undulates. Undulate is a verb that means to go up and down in a wave like motion. When I used to bicycle to and from work at the University of Calgary MS Clinic, my best friend there always scoffed when I said my cycle route “undulated gently.” She thought it was hilly, while I was adamant that it undulated.

Anyway, the first 12 kilometres of Burnaaga track, the jewel in the crown of the Mogo mountain bike trails, that descends from the top of Wandera Mountain to Mogo is two way so you can ride from Mogo up to the top of the old Snake Track (incorporated into Burnaaga) and back to town. Burnaaga feels like it undulates but there is more elevation gain on the way out than the way back.

Where Burnaaga crosses Maulbrooks Fire Trail (FT) you can take Pistol Shot FT uphill to the top of the old Snake track to add a nice easy descent to the undulating trail. We met three blokes out riding today, all locals, all, with the exception of a very old bloke on an E-bike (apparently the bloke who built Snake Track back in the day) on analog bikes. It was nice being away from the shuttlers and e-bike riders and downhill crowd and out covering distance. I like covering distance.

I still haven’t ridden the track right from the top (I will have to walk some of the features) and was hoping that today might be the day I rode a bit extra because, instead of taking Pistol Shot FT you can stay on Maulbrooks FT and intersect Burnaaga further up (near where Heffernans FT branches off Maulbrooks FT). That is an extra 10 kilometres riding and 300 metres more elevation gain. My legs (it was strength training day yesterday) didn’t have that in them today, plus it was cooking hot and we were sweating like crazy. The full Burnaaga trail is about 18 kilometres with 370 metres elevation gain and 840 metres descent but that is if you ride one way only from Wandera Mountain to Mogo.

Minus One

It’s that time of year: north wind, south wind, north wind, south wind. Today it was north wind forecast so we left early hoping to get 40 kilometres done in reasonable time. The northeasterly was up early. We were at Wasp Island by 8:45 am. Flat Rock to Wasp Island felt slow. The northeasterly wind was stronger and we had a northerly current. At Point Upright, we had a pause in the shelter of the headwind, but we were three kilometres off the magic twenty! Bumpy conditions and a headwind to Grasshopper Island where we pulled the plug and paddled back to North Durras for a quick land break. My stomach had been queasy all the way and I had eaten nothing but forced down an egg wrap on the beach before we turned south.

Sloppy seas and lumpy, bumpy conditions all the way to North Head where we ducked into the bay between Three Isle Rocks and North Head to sit for a moment out of the lumpiness, then home across the bay. We came up three kilometres short so bashed back out and around to Caseys Beach and back for a final tally of 39 kilometres. One kilometre shy of the goal.

Below is my speed graph. The first fast bit is to North Head, then a quick drop in speed as we head north against both current and wind culminating in the slowest section to Grasshopper Island. The faster return journey with current and wind behind us.

All That We've Lost

...make sure that my ability to meet and trauma and everything goes a little bit beyond the bare minimum....

Do you remember when Joe Simpson crawled down Siula Grande in Peru?¹ Or when Doug Scott crawled down The Ogre in Pakistan after breaking both his legs? No-one knows those stories anymore which is our loss. I listened to the monthly Sharp End Podcast today, and thought, as I often do, why do I listen to these episodes? The stories can be modestly interesting but the analysis makes vanilla ice-cream look like an exciting new flavour. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single guest say “I should have made better decisions.” The standard answer to the “learnings” (I blame the Millenials, or perhaps the Zoomers for popularising “learnings,” although the term has apparently been around for a centuries) is always “I need more gear.” Never, I need to make better decisions.

The first thing you have to get past in this episode is the annoying Zoomer who relates the story, who, in case you missed the 334 times he mentioned it, is a “professional” guide. Whatever that means. Anyway, the accident was just that an accident. Sydney injured her knee (apparently the quadriceps tendon was torn) which sounds like a really sucky injury to sustain, but stuff that like happens in the mountains. Sometimes these things are preventable by being stronger or having better proprioception or being less fatigued, but, injuries are a part of outdoor adventure life.

These guys were lucky. Not only did they get plucked off by a helicopter but they had a bag of bivvy gear dropped to them by helicopter. That gear drop made the difference between a cold night out at 3,000 metres and a relatively comfortable bivvy with food, drink, sleeping bags etc. What’s striking about this episode is that the two climbers simply sit on the ridge where the accident happens and wait for rescue. That seems odd to me. With a partially torn quadriceps tendon it is highly unlikely that you’ll be able to get out of there alone, but, it’s 4.45 pm when the accident happens, you’ve got four hours until sunset to do something, anything to make some kind of shelter for the night. Obviously there is no wood for a fire, but you might scavenge some snow for drinking water, move some rocks around to get some flat ground, build some rock walls for protection from the wind, or even just grovel your way to a slightly better spot to spend the night.

One of the best ways to avoid unplanned bivouacs at 3,000 metres when you have sustained an injury is to start early! This won’t necessarily prevent an accident, although if you are hurrying to get somewhere before nightfall that can increase your risk of accidents, but if you do need a rescue, the agency that has to come in to haul your arse out of there has a lot more daylight hours to work with.

When I was with Nelson SAR, the call for a missing skier or injured hiker almost always came after dark. Start early and you’ve got time to deal with anything that comes up. Leaving camp at 11 am with your boom box speaker, your fishing rod, and your almost dead mobile phone doesn’t leave much buffer for when things go wrong. And we all need buffers.

1As an aside, who gives Simpson’s amazing story of tenacity and survival a one star review because they don’t know how to use a dictionary (here’s the actual review: “To enjoy the book, you may need to really know what a 'col' is, what a 'moraine' is …”). Goodreads seems to be as big a cesspit as Bluesky.