The trail in darkness
Mar. 6th, 2010 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccLast night we walked from Belgrave station to CP4, in Olinda. In the dark.
I actually met Priscilla at Olinda first so we could leave her car there and I could drive us back to the station. We took my car rather than hers because my wiper blades are kind of funny at the moment, and I'd prefer to discover something has gone wrong with them again in daylight rather than with four people on a dark, windy road. At Belgrave I promptly headed off to get changed, having come straight from work via a supermarket to pick up batteries for my headlamp.
Yes, I have a headlamp. Just like on The Amazing Race. Hopefully I'm more Zach than Flo.
Having changed and sorting out my stuff in the car park I realised that I'd managed to pick up the completely wrong size of batteries (double A rather than triple A). *sigh* I think I'm actually more Blonde Team [0] than anything else. Fortunately Karena had brought a spare pack, so I didn't have to find the nearest battery outlet at short notice.
We headed off in fading light from the station past the people waiting for buses at the interchange at 7.30pm. As we came past one bus stop we overheard the following conversation between a group of young guys:
"What'd you get?"
"Red Lager! A carton was only $40! On special!"
"Yeah but it's Red Lager... wasn't there anything else?"
"For $40 for a carton? Only VB!"
You know you're old and have a reasonable income when you realise that you'd just pay the extra money and get something drinkable. (Actually in the same situation, I'd probably have gone the VB. Or gotten the rest to chip in for coldies. On the other hand, it wasn't Geelong Bitter, which remains my nadir of beer drinking.)
Past the Puffing Billy terminus and on to the 23% gradient road. There was still daylight, but the trees started to block it. Also, my body appears to have decided that as I keep exercising on really hot days it will now start sweating furiously the minute I start anything even vaguely strenuous. At this rate I think I will be wearing a towel around my neck and a headband on this walk. Possibly a buff a la Survivor as well. (Actually I have an authentic Survivor merchandise buff I got in Los Angeles... heh [1].)
As we turned on to Coles track the light was definitely fading fast, but there was still enough of it to be able to see. Kookaburras started up in the tree tops, which surprised me - I thought they only really went off during actual daylight. Karena and I were walking together at this point and she stopped to put on her headlamp. I thought I'd wait until we reached CP3, where at least there'd be light enough for me to put batteries in mine and get it set up.
At the cafe at CP3 I stood under their security light and started putting in batteries. Two negative up, one positive up, put in with arrow facing down... nothing happened. I pulled it apart again, and checked everything. Four checkings later I got Karena to have a look to see what I was missing. The arrow was also supposed to face another arrow that I hadn't seen. Again, Team Blonde, that's me. With my light finally working, and the others mucking around with the strobe effects on their lights, we headed off onto the first of the fern gully tracks.
I remembered this track as being narrow and steep, which it was. It seemed less steep than I recalled though, probably due to it being about 10-20oC cooler than the last time I did it. This didn't stop me either falling behind or sweating a lot. Up in front George was attempting to avoid all cobwebs and spiders, it being of course peak time for them to be sitting in the middle of their webs. The rest of us (Karena in particular, as she was walking second) were just grateful to George for clearing them out of the way.
Walking in the dark is different. The light on your head creates a blinker effect around your eyes - I felt like I had things pressing into my head on either side, but it was actually just the dark. You focus a lot more on the steps in front of you, on the exact pool of your light - you can't glance up as much to see what's ahead because you need the light so you can see where your feet are going to go. Particularly on the narrow, tree root-ridden, bark-covered, branch-obscured fern gully tracks. At one point I glanced up to realise I couldn't actually see any of the other lights ahead of me - they weren't much in front, but had gone around a corner and up a hill and suddenly I was alone in my own tiny pool of light. Fortunately the batteries didn't fail at that point, because it was fairly close to pitch black otherwise - no star or moonlight, and surprisingly little light from the city being reflected from the clouds.
What is attracted to the light of course is insects. It's very disconcerting to have a moth suddenly shoot up centimetres in front of your face, in search of the extremely large light source on top of your head. And then there were all the tiny bugs milling around.
Near the summit of the fern gully track I caught up with the other three. They paused to watch me safely over the stile, and we headed off again towards where we'd lost the trail the previous time. At this point I realised that some of the tiny bugs milling around my face were in fact light rain drops. I was relieved, not least because I'd been wondering just how many damn bugs I was breathing in!
The tracks feel different at night as well - you really, really notice when it's a smooth surface, compared to a rough uneven surface with additional tripping possibilities. The smooth surface lets you move much faster, and you can talk to the person next to you more while glancing at them - the rough surface all talking is done while you're carefully staring at the ground, trying to work out from shadows how big the drop to the track under the tree root is. Shadows are deceptive [2], and my depth perception at night isn't great to start with. I think I may have to wear glasses (if it's not raining of course) during that part of the walk.
Karena and Georgina were leading by this point, with Karena navigating. I was mostly using my map to swat moths away from my face. We emerged from the trails around Sassafras Falls to walk along the path near a road. It was surprising to suddenly see headlights again, and have an occasional secondary source of light flash past. We reached the Alfred Nicol Gardens and realised the gates were shut. Karena started planning an alternate route around them, when George noticed that there was an open side gate. So we crossed the road and headed in.
There were two seriously spectacular things in the gardens. The first was a tree, which fell in the high winds a couple of weeks ago. We passed the top part, which they'd chainsawed so you could get through on the road. At this point the tree diameter was around 1 metre. We looped downhill along the road and came across the bottom part of the tree, which is when I realised that the tree hadn't fallen downhill, it had fallen uphill. The bottom part of the fallen tree where they'd chainsawed a route through on the road was about 2-3m in diameter. And then we saw the stump which it had cracked off. It was freaking enormous. The diameter would have had to have been around 5m at the base, and the tree had split off at least 2.5m above the ground. It must have made a hell of a loud boom [3]. If we get there in daylight again I'll have to take photos.
The second spectacular thing was an enormous spiderweb, complete with enormous spider right across the road. Fortunately it was also about 1m above George's head, not that this was enough to stop her from stopping dead and checking if there was anything even vaguely likely to drift across her face. We tried to take photos of this one, but it was too dark, even with four headlamps illuminating it.
We continued on through the gardens, discussing the spider, and (in my case at least) wondering out loud if that meant there was an even bigger one lying in wait down the hill [4]. This was not a popular theory.
On to the Sassafras Creek Trail. Another fern gully track, with a drop to the creek on one side and deceptive shadows, grabby tree bark and fronds coming out to smack you in the face. If you've seen Snow White the Disney animation recently, it's very similar to when she's running panic stricken through the creepy forest. Complete with growling noise, which was most likely a possum. George and Karena got a bit ahead of Priscilla and I, who were proceeding reasonably cautiously so as not to fall in the creek. We came to an intersection, where one trail lead off uphill to the right, and the other downhill to the left. We took the left hand trail and followed the creek until we hit a bridge.
"I don't remember this bridge..." said Priscilla. This was worrying as she and Karena had walked this section in daylight the previous Saturday.
We looked at the map. It wasn't detailed enough and had no listed bridges. Damn the lack of zoom function on paper materials! We paused, our two tiny pools of light being the only things visible. We certainly couldn't see Karena and George anywhere.
"I think we're fine - if we just keep following the creek we should get there..."
"I'm going to ring Karena." Priscilla phoned. We were on the right track. The reason Priscilla couldn't remember the bridge was because they'd taken the wrong turn on Saturday and therefore hadn't come across it. Heh.
Emerging from the creek trail finally we paused briefly. The clouds had cleared and there were stars visible above the tree line. Hundreds of them. There's a lot less light pollution out in the hills. We turned off our headlamps to see how dark it got. The short version: very. I could make out Karena and George's t-shirts, which were light coloured, but couldn't see Priscilla in her darker shirt at all. The only part of me visible was the white flecks on my shirt. Good thing I didn't listen to Dean's suggestion about using our natural night vision to walk.
We walked carefully up Perrins Creek Rd, keeping to as far on to the verge as far as possible. We were only passed by one car, which was good. Then we reached the foot of Hacketts Rd.
Hacketts Rd is actually a lot better to walk in the dark, mostly because you can't see where it goes. I hadn't realised how much of it was actually psychological until we were trundling along. As usual I fell behind, but I was still powering up a lot quicker than I had the previous time (seriously, it's amazing how much difference 10oC makes). The other difference is that the recent rain has made the steepest, lowest third of the road seriously spongy and more difficult to tread than last time we did it. Half way up we paused to look at the fairly stunning view of city lights. Ooh, fairy lights, pretty!
Two thirds of the way up (not that I realised that till later) a car came down the hill towards us. I glanced up past it and discovered I couldn't see anyone else's headlamps, which left open a slightly worrying possibility that they'd all vanished off into the dark and were going to leave me to walk back to Belgrave from Olinda. They hadn't, of course, they were just over the verge and facing away from me working out where the road went.
Crossing the main road we continued along a dirt road that I'd completely forgotten about as being on the trail. Naturally we got passed by another car at this stage. Nothing like having dirt to mix with your sweat! Then onto the tiny footpath that I did remember from last time, mostly for the Clydesdale-sized piles of horse poo along it. Which is even more tricky to dodge at night.
Past the swimming pool, past the golf course... and then we'd reached checkpoint four, where Priscilla's car sat lonely and waiting. She started fishing the keys out of her bag, where they still fortunately were. I don't think any of us were entirely in the mood to walk back to Belgrave! Our cars were fortunately still sitting intact in the extremely well lit Belgrave station car park, and we headed off home accompanied by the thumping from what has to be one of Belgrave's only nightspots, The Ruby, and dodging the occasional pedestrian who stepped out without looking. I did laugh at the group who were pole dancing on the street sign though.
So - we've now completed at least part of the trail we're likely to hit after dark in the appropriate conditions. Hackett's Rd is doable (unless it's over 35oC again, although that is... less likely in April after dark) and it only took us 4 hours and 15 minutes. Which is a distinct improvement on our last time (and again how much of a difference does climate make?!) Even that was slower than Karena and Priscilla's time on the weekend, which was 3.5 hours. My fault. And the darkness.
[0] "Train-o por favore? Toot toot!"
[1] We stayed opposite CBS studios, and it was one of the few non-The Price Is Right! items in their gift shop. They had no Amazing Race merchandise at all.
[2] See Bablyon 5 if you don't believe me.
[3] There's always a boom.
[4] I've seen Arachaphobia. And Giant Spider Invasion. Brrrmmm!
I actually met Priscilla at Olinda first so we could leave her car there and I could drive us back to the station. We took my car rather than hers because my wiper blades are kind of funny at the moment, and I'd prefer to discover something has gone wrong with them again in daylight rather than with four people on a dark, windy road. At Belgrave I promptly headed off to get changed, having come straight from work via a supermarket to pick up batteries for my headlamp.
Yes, I have a headlamp. Just like on The Amazing Race. Hopefully I'm more Zach than Flo.
Having changed and sorting out my stuff in the car park I realised that I'd managed to pick up the completely wrong size of batteries (double A rather than triple A). *sigh* I think I'm actually more Blonde Team [0] than anything else. Fortunately Karena had brought a spare pack, so I didn't have to find the nearest battery outlet at short notice.
We headed off in fading light from the station past the people waiting for buses at the interchange at 7.30pm. As we came past one bus stop we overheard the following conversation between a group of young guys:
"What'd you get?"
"Red Lager! A carton was only $40! On special!"
"Yeah but it's Red Lager... wasn't there anything else?"
"For $40 for a carton? Only VB!"
You know you're old and have a reasonable income when you realise that you'd just pay the extra money and get something drinkable. (Actually in the same situation, I'd probably have gone the VB. Or gotten the rest to chip in for coldies. On the other hand, it wasn't Geelong Bitter, which remains my nadir of beer drinking.)
Past the Puffing Billy terminus and on to the 23% gradient road. There was still daylight, but the trees started to block it. Also, my body appears to have decided that as I keep exercising on really hot days it will now start sweating furiously the minute I start anything even vaguely strenuous. At this rate I think I will be wearing a towel around my neck and a headband on this walk. Possibly a buff a la Survivor as well. (Actually I have an authentic Survivor merchandise buff I got in Los Angeles... heh [1].)
As we turned on to Coles track the light was definitely fading fast, but there was still enough of it to be able to see. Kookaburras started up in the tree tops, which surprised me - I thought they only really went off during actual daylight. Karena and I were walking together at this point and she stopped to put on her headlamp. I thought I'd wait until we reached CP3, where at least there'd be light enough for me to put batteries in mine and get it set up.
At the cafe at CP3 I stood under their security light and started putting in batteries. Two negative up, one positive up, put in with arrow facing down... nothing happened. I pulled it apart again, and checked everything. Four checkings later I got Karena to have a look to see what I was missing. The arrow was also supposed to face another arrow that I hadn't seen. Again, Team Blonde, that's me. With my light finally working, and the others mucking around with the strobe effects on their lights, we headed off onto the first of the fern gully tracks.
I remembered this track as being narrow and steep, which it was. It seemed less steep than I recalled though, probably due to it being about 10-20oC cooler than the last time I did it. This didn't stop me either falling behind or sweating a lot. Up in front George was attempting to avoid all cobwebs and spiders, it being of course peak time for them to be sitting in the middle of their webs. The rest of us (Karena in particular, as she was walking second) were just grateful to George for clearing them out of the way.
Walking in the dark is different. The light on your head creates a blinker effect around your eyes - I felt like I had things pressing into my head on either side, but it was actually just the dark. You focus a lot more on the steps in front of you, on the exact pool of your light - you can't glance up as much to see what's ahead because you need the light so you can see where your feet are going to go. Particularly on the narrow, tree root-ridden, bark-covered, branch-obscured fern gully tracks. At one point I glanced up to realise I couldn't actually see any of the other lights ahead of me - they weren't much in front, but had gone around a corner and up a hill and suddenly I was alone in my own tiny pool of light. Fortunately the batteries didn't fail at that point, because it was fairly close to pitch black otherwise - no star or moonlight, and surprisingly little light from the city being reflected from the clouds.
What is attracted to the light of course is insects. It's very disconcerting to have a moth suddenly shoot up centimetres in front of your face, in search of the extremely large light source on top of your head. And then there were all the tiny bugs milling around.
Near the summit of the fern gully track I caught up with the other three. They paused to watch me safely over the stile, and we headed off again towards where we'd lost the trail the previous time. At this point I realised that some of the tiny bugs milling around my face were in fact light rain drops. I was relieved, not least because I'd been wondering just how many damn bugs I was breathing in!
The tracks feel different at night as well - you really, really notice when it's a smooth surface, compared to a rough uneven surface with additional tripping possibilities. The smooth surface lets you move much faster, and you can talk to the person next to you more while glancing at them - the rough surface all talking is done while you're carefully staring at the ground, trying to work out from shadows how big the drop to the track under the tree root is. Shadows are deceptive [2], and my depth perception at night isn't great to start with. I think I may have to wear glasses (if it's not raining of course) during that part of the walk.
Karena and Georgina were leading by this point, with Karena navigating. I was mostly using my map to swat moths away from my face. We emerged from the trails around Sassafras Falls to walk along the path near a road. It was surprising to suddenly see headlights again, and have an occasional secondary source of light flash past. We reached the Alfred Nicol Gardens and realised the gates were shut. Karena started planning an alternate route around them, when George noticed that there was an open side gate. So we crossed the road and headed in.
There were two seriously spectacular things in the gardens. The first was a tree, which fell in the high winds a couple of weeks ago. We passed the top part, which they'd chainsawed so you could get through on the road. At this point the tree diameter was around 1 metre. We looped downhill along the road and came across the bottom part of the tree, which is when I realised that the tree hadn't fallen downhill, it had fallen uphill. The bottom part of the fallen tree where they'd chainsawed a route through on the road was about 2-3m in diameter. And then we saw the stump which it had cracked off. It was freaking enormous. The diameter would have had to have been around 5m at the base, and the tree had split off at least 2.5m above the ground. It must have made a hell of a loud boom [3]. If we get there in daylight again I'll have to take photos.
The second spectacular thing was an enormous spiderweb, complete with enormous spider right across the road. Fortunately it was also about 1m above George's head, not that this was enough to stop her from stopping dead and checking if there was anything even vaguely likely to drift across her face. We tried to take photos of this one, but it was too dark, even with four headlamps illuminating it.
We continued on through the gardens, discussing the spider, and (in my case at least) wondering out loud if that meant there was an even bigger one lying in wait down the hill [4]. This was not a popular theory.
On to the Sassafras Creek Trail. Another fern gully track, with a drop to the creek on one side and deceptive shadows, grabby tree bark and fronds coming out to smack you in the face. If you've seen Snow White the Disney animation recently, it's very similar to when she's running panic stricken through the creepy forest. Complete with growling noise, which was most likely a possum. George and Karena got a bit ahead of Priscilla and I, who were proceeding reasonably cautiously so as not to fall in the creek. We came to an intersection, where one trail lead off uphill to the right, and the other downhill to the left. We took the left hand trail and followed the creek until we hit a bridge.
"I don't remember this bridge..." said Priscilla. This was worrying as she and Karena had walked this section in daylight the previous Saturday.
We looked at the map. It wasn't detailed enough and had no listed bridges. Damn the lack of zoom function on paper materials! We paused, our two tiny pools of light being the only things visible. We certainly couldn't see Karena and George anywhere.
"I think we're fine - if we just keep following the creek we should get there..."
"I'm going to ring Karena." Priscilla phoned. We were on the right track. The reason Priscilla couldn't remember the bridge was because they'd taken the wrong turn on Saturday and therefore hadn't come across it. Heh.
Emerging from the creek trail finally we paused briefly. The clouds had cleared and there were stars visible above the tree line. Hundreds of them. There's a lot less light pollution out in the hills. We turned off our headlamps to see how dark it got. The short version: very. I could make out Karena and George's t-shirts, which were light coloured, but couldn't see Priscilla in her darker shirt at all. The only part of me visible was the white flecks on my shirt. Good thing I didn't listen to Dean's suggestion about using our natural night vision to walk.
We walked carefully up Perrins Creek Rd, keeping to as far on to the verge as far as possible. We were only passed by one car, which was good. Then we reached the foot of Hacketts Rd.
Hacketts Rd is actually a lot better to walk in the dark, mostly because you can't see where it goes. I hadn't realised how much of it was actually psychological until we were trundling along. As usual I fell behind, but I was still powering up a lot quicker than I had the previous time (seriously, it's amazing how much difference 10oC makes). The other difference is that the recent rain has made the steepest, lowest third of the road seriously spongy and more difficult to tread than last time we did it. Half way up we paused to look at the fairly stunning view of city lights. Ooh, fairy lights, pretty!
Two thirds of the way up (not that I realised that till later) a car came down the hill towards us. I glanced up past it and discovered I couldn't see anyone else's headlamps, which left open a slightly worrying possibility that they'd all vanished off into the dark and were going to leave me to walk back to Belgrave from Olinda. They hadn't, of course, they were just over the verge and facing away from me working out where the road went.
Crossing the main road we continued along a dirt road that I'd completely forgotten about as being on the trail. Naturally we got passed by another car at this stage. Nothing like having dirt to mix with your sweat! Then onto the tiny footpath that I did remember from last time, mostly for the Clydesdale-sized piles of horse poo along it. Which is even more tricky to dodge at night.
Past the swimming pool, past the golf course... and then we'd reached checkpoint four, where Priscilla's car sat lonely and waiting. She started fishing the keys out of her bag, where they still fortunately were. I don't think any of us were entirely in the mood to walk back to Belgrave! Our cars were fortunately still sitting intact in the extremely well lit Belgrave station car park, and we headed off home accompanied by the thumping from what has to be one of Belgrave's only nightspots, The Ruby, and dodging the occasional pedestrian who stepped out without looking. I did laugh at the group who were pole dancing on the street sign though.
So - we've now completed at least part of the trail we're likely to hit after dark in the appropriate conditions. Hackett's Rd is doable (unless it's over 35oC again, although that is... less likely in April after dark) and it only took us 4 hours and 15 minutes. Which is a distinct improvement on our last time (and again how much of a difference does climate make?!) Even that was slower than Karena and Priscilla's time on the weekend, which was 3.5 hours. My fault. And the darkness.
[0] "Train-o por favore? Toot toot!"
[1] We stayed opposite CBS studios, and it was one of the few non-The Price Is Right! items in their gift shop. They had no Amazing Race merchandise at all.
[2] See Bablyon 5 if you don't believe me.
[3] There's always a boom.
[4] I've seen Arachaphobia. And Giant Spider Invasion. Brrrmmm!
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Date: 2010-03-09 04:21 am (UTC)And I know precisely which moment in Snow White you were referring to, as I have now seen the damn movie 80000000 times.
And I liked the bit about the moth. They'll know where you are on the actual walk by the cries of "Argh! Oh, another moth. Phew. I thought it was another spider."
Well done on the walk!