Mt Donna Buang

In my previous post "Come on honey its only a 2 hr drive" I mentioned we had come across another hiker who had already done most of the AAWT and were able to get some advice from him.  Allan Gamble.

Well this weekend past I caught up with Allan for a 24 hour hike of a local peak.  Although it does not form part of the Australian Alps Walking track I was still happy to get out for some fresh air, training, and to see how my hiking form stacked up against someone who had done most of the Track already.

Allans wife and kids were nice enough to drive us out to Fenshaw Car park Sunday morning and see us on our way about 9:30am.  The first 4km was flat and straight forward but man did Allan push the pace.  I probably should have jogged to keep up.  He assured me this was not an AAWT pace but purely due to todays late start he wanted to be conscious of the time and distance and make pace while things were easy.

Then we started to climb.  About 1000 meters of ascending that afternoon.  It was hard yakka!  I had done the Melbourne Tough Mudder event the day before and with Allan pushing the pace I was dead.  I had stopped a number of times on the incline, it was just hard work for my tired legs to push a 22 kilo pack up those hills.  I wondered to myself if this is how I will feel on some of the days on the AAWT.  Would I get leg weary? Would my body let me down like this on the trail?  Have I not put enough
work in?

On arriving home I looked up our schedule, we have some big days where we will be covering big kilometres but usually in areas that won't be peaks like Mt Donna Buang.  That being said I am feeling maybe we should make a back up schedule so we can prepare ourselves and our families back home for the scenario where we take a couple extra days because maybe we have bit off more than we can chew.

What I can say about todays hike was it was different, literally.  Ever 2 hours or so today I would look around and nature had changed.  It physically was completely different then the areas we were in 2 hours previous.  From tall gums with some minor ground cover to scattered old growth tree with long grass the size of hay fields and then tall gums trees again but this time old thick ferns and under growth that would have been there for decades.  Was a real visual feast.

So Sunday about 3pm we decided to finish up a kilometre or so short of where we were wanting to reach because we found a good enough camping spot.  We were alternatively going to just plop ourselves on the walking track just ahead so here was just as good.  We were just to the side of the 4x4 track we were following ( which was actually closed to vehicles)

We set up camp, ate up our hot meals and had a good chin wag.  As it got cold & dark the mosquitos finally gave up on us but the leaches didn't.  Both Allan and I dispatch a couple little suckers before they latched on but the next morning we realised we couldn't fight them all off.  Allan scored a couple on his legs and upon my arrival back home I found I had a lovely love bite mark on my lower back from a leach that I was unaware had attached to me.  I was itching the spot all day but just thought it was a part of my pack rubbing my clothes or something!

Of course my phone has gone dead during the night so no picture of the summit of Mt Donna Buang or the intense 4.5 - 5km descent which did not snake its was down like the 17km road does.  But we walked in a straight line right down the side of this peak and man the legs were screaming.  Although unsafe, at one point I was running full pace down the mountain with my 20 kilo pack just so my legs could feel a different strain.

Did I mention we started our day at 5:30am so the muscles were just loving me!

We made it down the wet descent without either of us stacking it on the way down and we happy to get  on the bus in Warburton to head back to Melbourne.

Thanks heap to Allan Gamble for inviting me along for the ride.