I bend over to try to stretch out and my back starts to spasm. I have had a constant headache for the last couple hours. I know I am broken and need water. I check my camelbak as I start to climb Mt Despair and I barely have any clean water left. So I decide to take the risk and climb down into the bush to try to find water, again. I hang one of my trekking poles from the tree by my pack so that I will be able to identify the trail and my pack as I climb back out. I spend about 40 minutes (20mins down and same back out) looking for water but no luck. I climb back out and know I need to make a decision on getting myself help or fixed.
I decide to have dinner using the brown water. See video below.
I can make a list of about 10 things in that video that were inaccurate, contradictory to something I had said previously in the video or plain just didn't make sense because I forgot to say words! Happy to receive facebook messages or messages in general laughing at them all.
After recording the video I start thinking about how I cam make the brown water I am boiling go further and provide me extra energy and resources. I decide to add a sachet of red powerade crystals to the dehydrated dinner. Highly concentrated red powerade Honey Soy Chicken dinner, has addressed a lot of things but man that was like eating solid sugar. Its not helping my headache thats for sure. I have energy again and I am not cramping so I feel like I have made a good choice. Now lets finish this day and got me some water!
So I finish the climb up Mt Despair and down to Catharine Saddle. The water is apparently down this old 4x4 track. Straight away I can see puddle on the track and I am almost tempted to have a drink. The trail "s" beds 4 or 5 times and then I figure its time to climb down into the scrub and see what I can find. I climb down about 200m and I can hear a trickle. I lay down and look under some fallen trees.... there it is. A small trickle into a pond just bigger than my water bottle. Its clear and no swimmers so I put back a full 500ml straight away. GOLD! I fill up my camelbak and the hip bottle and walk back up. I can actually feel the cold of the water as it travels into my stomach. Its an amazing feeling but awkward feeling. To know that your insides are so dry you can now feel the the water passing over your internals and re-moisturizing them.
I am just grateful to have made it here and found water, 34 kms in the hot sun including The Viking makes me a tired boy. Good night.
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| My little puddle water source |
I am glad that I invested in a Steripen. I ran out of water near Mt Clear found water not sure if it was a spring or a puddle (had a few taddies in it) looked like weak black tea, used the Steripen filter , the zapped it and drank 3 liters ! no adverse effects. the pros and cons of water purification, sometimes overlooks that if use aqua tabs, you must 1 hour or so before drinking.
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