Back from four days’ hiking in Wonnangatta-Moroka area with a young American friend, Steve Hutcheson whom I met on the Dusky Track earlier this year: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/a-friend-i-met-on-the-dusky-track-fiordland-nz/ The rivers were flooded and difficult to cross but the weather beautiful. Probably sub-zero of a night but warm and comfy for us thanks to my Tyvek tarps and a cheery fire out the front.
The two Steves warm and comfy in one of my Tyvek shelters:
We had many beautiful encounters with wild deer including watching does and fauns play, watching them cross the river at dusk, and twice pretty much tripped over fauns lying hidden in the grass/ferns. Could have easily snatched them up in our bare hands but just left them lie.
Doe and faun crossing river at dusk.
I had a very bad 3 metre fall off a slippery log into a rocky stream bed flat onto my back which unexpectedly and serendipitously produced no injury – indeed my back feels much better this morning! May have to try that again! Or maybe not! Indeed I think I shall avoid log crossings for all time. They really are too dangerous. Apart from the risk of injury, if you slip off into fast water, you will be swimming, with your pack on, possibly in the worst place in the river to be attempting such a crossing. Better to seek out a deep, slow spot to swim across in the first place.
As I slipped off the log I had the presence of mind to throw my gun sideways as I did not want to land on it and break me or it. As I gathered myself up from the ground in a spot which would have been very difficult to get a satellite call out of if I had broken something, being in the bottom of a steep gully, I looked around everywhere for the gun. Of course, it was lying right underneath me!
View up the Wonnangatta river on the way home.
Crossing flooded river in June 2012. See the fire killed timber the floods have brought down.
Further up the river the flood debris was astonishing:
