Australian Alps Walking Track - Day 9 and 10

Back to the bush! Having spoken with Hayden and Dave the night before I was full of energy this morning.  They had mentioned that they didn't think they would see me again and had expected me to be much further down the track by now.  To be honest, parts of me agreed.

I woke at 5am having had a great sleep.  Seriously, the beds at the YHA Thredbo are so comfortable.  My pack was easier to organised this morning as I have posted about 1.2kg of gear ( my broken Katadyn Water Filter, my hiking shorts that were way too big by now, spare batteries and my book lamp).  I left the YHA about 6am and walked along the roadside to the start of the trail start ( Cascade Trail)

Thredbo River

Having had the day off yesterday I felt like really pushing some pace.  I none the less wanted to stop in at the huts along the way to sign the logbooks and to check them out in general.  So I just put my head down and with the excitement of heading back into the wilderness just hiked.  Before I knew it I came across another hiker walking in the same direction....I ran him down to chat for a while.  HIs name was Matt and we had crossed on the other side of Kosciuszko a couple days ago.  He is one of the leaders of the school group I had passed.  He said they were camping at Cascade hut and were going onto Tin mine hut.  I said he must be wrong as we were yet get to Cascade Hut!   He informed me I passed it about 3km's ago!  So that means I was walking at about 9km an hour.  Although I was disappointed about missing the hut I was pretty excited that I had put in the km's.  I started pushing harder and harder.  I stopped by Tin Mine Hut on the way past and had a snack.

The whole day I came across brumbies and a couple deer.  Also came across a couple groups of hikers who all wished me well.  So I came into Cowombat Flat about 4:30pm and set up camp.  So for those that know and those that don't know the trail, Cowombat flat is 42 kms from the trail head of Cascade trail and the YHA at Thredbo is about 4km of road walking from there so in a 10.5hr day I totalled 46km's.  This was my biggest km day of the entire journey.  Of course I had to take the customary photo of crossing the MurrayRiver before having dinner and going to bed.  

Hard to take a selfie crossing the Murray, was a little wider than the photos I had seen,

So Day 10 was really enjoyable for me personally.  Being really pleased with the progress of yesterday I just really enjoyed myself today.  I came across a wild cat that took off pretty quick as soon as it realised we were walking the same stretch.  I was also really surprised with the Brumbies today, they were all really short!  They weren't babies like I had seen in the bunches of Brumbies on previous days but rather stalky mature horses!  Really strange.  There was 1 black brumby that took like an hour to work out that if he walking on the trail, eventually I would catch up to him again.

I really enjoyed the Limestone Creek area. It reminded me of the mountains I grew up hiking in Vermont, USA with my family.  I just got swept away in enjoyment today.  I decided to make camp early today - Smoko Creek at about 3:30pm.  The next camp was a good climb and 12kms away.  It gave me a chance to dump 3 days worth of food and take some time to eat some extra meals and hot chocolates.  Because I am travelling much faster than my itinerary I am constantly carrying more food than I actually need.  Strange how throwing away food really makes you feel accomplished.  I had packed that food because I thought I'd need it, then to not need it was really motivating.

Did I mention it was raining all day!  Not heavy so no big deal.  First sign of bad weather so far on my AAWT adventure.