(For the start of the adventure, see Part One)
I woke up at 7 on Saturday morning, but in the end it’s 8 by the time we were packed and hiking out of camp. Our plan was to hike out on Crosscut Saw, and get as close to the Razor as we could – of course the plan was really to get to the Razor, but we didn’t know if we’d be able to cover that much ground. We set off on a cool morning, but once we reached Crosscut Saw, it was warming up.
Before too long, we were covering new ground. Up and down, up and down. The Crosscut Saw reminded me of a rather tame version of the Beggary Bumps in Southwest Tassie. Alex lags behind me on the uphills, then I lag behind him on the downhills. We reach Mt Buggery, then down into Horrible Gap in two hours. We’re covering ground in good time. Then we head up again onto Mount Speculation, stopping for a moment to admire the view, then hiking onwards to Catherine’s Saddle. The track starts to deteriorate, and become a lot less fun – we are forcing our way through scrubbery, and have to pay more attention to track finding. Down in Catherine’s Saddle we look around to work out the way, spotting a worn path leading off to the left, we follow it to a dugout shelter – an old mine digging? Some crazy hermit? Who knows.
We keep moving to the unexciting Mt Despair, and then force our way along the manky track across towards the Razor. The track makes it’s way across conglomerate rock slopes, and through bushes, staggering around like a drunk, weaving around obstacles that aren’t there.
By the time we get to the turnoff to the Razor, Alex’s water bladder is empty, mine is getting low, and we just have our shared water bottle left. Alex collapses, and doesn’t want to go any further – he’s happy for me to run out and see how close I can get to the top though, while he has something to eat. It’s 2pm, when I leave, saying I’ll be back by 3, and head off across the conglomerate death slopes. After taking ages to find a way across one gully, I realise it’s hopeless – a whole system of gullies and death slopes separate me from my goal, I’d be lucky to get there in an hour, let alone back again. I make one last scramble up onto a high point, scoping out future approaches, then turn around and run back to Alex. He had been busy eating lunch and fighting off march flies. We assess our water situation – it’s alright, we can pick up more from Camp Creek, before Mt Spec – we’re assuming that the hiker we’d met last night (who told us Camp Creek was dry) had been looking in the wrong place, he didn’t seem to have looked in the right place from where he was gesturing on the map. Either way, we were still a couple of hours away from potential water. I grab some more food, and we start hiking back. I realise our stubbornness has made us leave the turnaround point a bit late in the day. We’ll be finishing in the dark for sure.
Getting to Camp Creek proves difficult. My water runs out too, so we’re rationing our last water bottle between us. By now it’s lovely and warm – the projected afternoon storm never turned up, despite us willing the rumbling thunder to turn into rain for us. We take a slightly different path back, following the 4WD track for longer instead of heading straight up Mt Spec. Finally we are within 100 metres of the creek, and we tear down the gully – well, Alex tears, I go as fast as my knees will let me. “Can you hear that?†he calls – ah, the creek has plenty of water in it, it’s gurgling away loud and healthily. At the creek already, he calls again: “There’s water for you!â€. I curse him, as I’m moving as fast as I can, and yes, I am rather thirsty, and yes, I had assumed the existence of the creek meant there was water for me. He calls out something else and I threaten to thump him when I get down there if he doesn’t shut up. My knees are not feeling bad, but they’re still tender enough after hiking over 20 km of steep terrain.
Reaching the creek, I gratefully take a waterbottle full of untreated water. At this point I don’t care what organisms are living in my water, I’m thirsty. Thirst slaked, we have a bit to eat, fill up all our water containers, add puritabs, then trek up back out to the 4WD track. On and up Mt Spec. On the summit we stop for some more food – Alex is having trouble eating much though, as he’d been feeling dehydrated for a while. We pass others camped just off the summit – the sun is already getting low in the sky “You’re heading all the way back to Mac Springs tonight?†“Yeah†“Better start running!â€
I’m feeling fine, so start trying to make a decent pace now we’re on a good track again, thinking we can still be home by 10pm. Alex isn’t feeling up to it though, and starts to need frequent rests. We get to the top of Mt Buggery, and I try feeding him some manky Cookies n Cream power bar, eating a corner myself as well. He tries to eat it, but his stomach reacts by throwing it up, as well as a litre or so of water. Ok, guess we really will have to take it easy. I resign myself to getting back before midnight hopefully.
Alex is having trouble going uphill mainly – he’s making deals with the path, offering it anything if it will just stop going uphill. I take his pack from him, and try and encourage him to keep going after every rest – the problem is, every time he rests, I have to wait, and get cold, and start feeling worse. We have food still, but none of it is particularly appetising at the moment – I just want to get back to camp for dinner, before I run out of energy (although at this point I don’t have much hope in Alex’s earlier promise to cook dinner for us).
We cross the Crosscut Saw in total darkness – it’s a brilliant clear night though, so every time we rest I spend my time staring at the stars. Out to our west, the lights of Mt Buller mar an otherwise unspoiled alpine landscape. I curse the wind blowing from the west, and enjoy the refuge when the path winds to the east of the ridgeline.
Finally we reach the point where we got to the top of the Crosscut Saw yesterday. We can make it from here. Automatons, we stumble back towards camp. It’s just before midnight when we reach the tent – 34km and 16 hours later. I get Alex to light the stove, then I cook us a quick pasta dinner. I crawl into the tent, looking forward to sleeping, when Alex points out the huntsman on the roof of the tent. Argh. He gestures at it with a book, then tries unsuccessfully to convince it to crawl into a cup. I grab one of the books in the tent, and use the front cover to trap the spider in the cup. Unfortunately, it’s hard to keep a seal with a book cover when the rest of the book is awkwardly hanging off. The spider starts to escape, crawling onto the book. I yell at Alex to open the tent door, as the spider is franticly trying to crawl it’s way off the book, and I am frantically trying to avoid it deciding I’m a good way off. After some faffing, Alex manages to get the tent open, and I throw the book out. A few seconds later I poke it, check it for spiders, then retrieve, and rezip the tent – carefully closed. So we can finally sleep.
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