Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Busted Rings and the Mangapumarumaru

On arrival at the College carpark on Sunday it was agreed that the weather watch meant we should do Plan B which was over the Ringbuster to Brill's Hut and then back over and down the Mangapumarumaru. At that point Hedley revealed who wore the pants in his house by whispering to Kurt that he would rush home and do the housework before Teleri returned from her adventure race.

Since Barry said our planned walk would take only 5-6 hours Kurt, who had done none of the previous walks,decided he would tag along. With that Roger piled in with Karl and Jenny, and Kurt, myself, Lea, Trevor/Terry, Aaron and Barry piled into the Destry mobile and we headed up the gorge.

After a 3 k walk up the road we launched into the Ringbuster which was true to its name. From the top we got separated a little with Kurt in no-man's land between the two groups. Roger, Lea, Barry and I sat down and used the map and compass to plot our way successfully to Brill's to find Kurt had successfully stumbled across it as well.

It was then a pleasant and scenic walk north before we headed up a spur to find our way to the Mangapumarumaru. This was a huge climb of 500m. Unfortunately we missed the track and as the rain started to fall we realised that the spur we went down after the climb was incorrect. We had to scramble back up!!! and up!!! until we found the correct track.

By this time the 5-6 hours were up and we still had a fair way to go. Kurt was now digging deep. We now had close to an hour of very steep downhill which involved a lot of falling, sliding, grabbing of supple jack until we fell into the Mangapumarumaru. As we started the last few kilometres down and through the Mangapumarumaru we made a bit of a mistake. Trevor, Destry, Roger and Jenny opened up a bit of a gap between myself, Kurt and Lea when we decided to wait for Aaron, Karl and Barry. Aaron turned up to say that Karl had gone back to look for Barry. We waited for a while with no one turning up. At that point we decided to head straight up from the creek to find a track we believed was up there somewhere in the hope that Barry and Karl had found it and had gone on to the road. It was a tough scramble up through supple jack until we found the track. All ended well as we found the others at the cars but for a while it didn't feel right to me.

A couple of times earlier in the day I found myself separated from the others for a few minutes and it wasn't a nice feeling.

The whole trek took us 9 hours! and it was bloody hard work but it was another great day out testing body and gear. Kurt impressed with his determination. While he struggled on the uphill and downhill he impressed with the sitting down and eating lunch.

Hopefully some fellow adventurers will send me photos they took to post for your enjoyment.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

sounds like there was alot of leaving people behind going on. costing a bit of time. How many times has Karl done that trek? 3, and it still gets us all. She's a good trek for a bit of nav work.