An even tougher day than yesterday or the day before - am relieved to have made it to Wonnangatta River and have already drunk a few litres of its untreated perfection!
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| Hole in the rocks - looking up |
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| Hole in the rocks - looking down |
The sun was behind the peak of the Viking this morning until I made it to the summit later on, so there was no spectacular dawn to watch. I packed up, had breakfast, got ready and left the camp site at 7:05am. The walk up to the walls of the Viking was steep at times but otherwise uneventful. I found the ascent gully easily enough and then was confronted by the vertical hole in the rock mentioned in Chapman’s notes, but without any sign of the fixed rope. So, I attached my trekking pole to my pack, took a photo of what I was about to attempt, took another good look at the ascent, took a deep breath … and launched myself. A rather wobbly upright log was the only thing that enabled me to reach up far enough to get a very precarious hand hold. Just writing this makes me feel a bit ill. If I’d fallen, I’m not sure I would’ve stopped where the log was - the slope down from there was very steep and right beneath that point there was another hole between the rocks and beyond that - thin mountain air. I had to wedge one foot between the rocks and launch myself again. I then realised that I couldn’t go any further directly up - I managed instead to lunge over to a rounded rock to my left and my (and my pack’s) momentum was enough that my centre of gravity was far enough onto the rock for me to stay there. I scrambled up, crawled a few minutes then thankfully dropped onto the ground beyond the rocks. Shaking, heart pounding, hand bleeding.
From there, it was a steep but mangable ascent to the top of the Viking for incredible views. To my surprise, a small green tent was pitched just below the summit - probably the bushy from yesterday, although the shadow inside the tent didn’t come out, so I couldn’t be sure.
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| Viking views |
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| Viking views |
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| Viking views |
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| Traversing to South Viking |
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| Summit of South Viking |
From there, it was a largely pathless traverse over to the South Viking - had to descend to the top of the ascent gully, where there were signs of previous campers, i.e. rubbish everywhere. Not impressed. The supposed cairned route was hard to find but it didn’t matter - I made the summit of South Viking after crossing three or so jagged mini-escarpments. Once again had mobile coverage, so I sent Nadia a photo and started on the long descent. I guess I was on a path with an occasional cairn about a third of the time. This wasn’t any fun at all and I hope I don’t have to do this again any time soon. At times, the brush growth was around three metres high and very difficult to push through - no visibility and the new branches were like strong electrical cables trying to trip me up or just slow me down. My legs got scratched to bits in no time so I belatedly zipped the trouser extensions onto my shorts. I made it through with a combination of dead reckoning (take southeast bearing, push through 10 metres, take bearing again), near navigation (pick tree on southeast bearing 10-20 metres distant, walk to it, pick next tree on southeast bearing) and using the GPS and digital maps to try to pick the least steep descent (to avoid arriving at cliffs). I ended up going a bit too far south-southeast and finally glimpsed the river through the trees from a fair height. What a great feeling! It meant the last 30-40 metres were down a near-vertical slope, thankfully heavily vegetated, so I was able to use that to slow me down. I had to walk quite a way along the river - no path so I did some wading - so nice on the feet! First thing I did, though, was have a long drink and dunk my hat in the cool water. It was quite difficult to find the camp site and when I eventually did, I couldn’t believe it. A tent-sized clearing, with stones around a small fireplace, amongst the ferocious blackberry bushes. As if the native cable-bushes weren’t enough, I had to contend with this introduced pest as well. No berries either.
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| Wonnangatta River camp site |
The river is a beautiful, rocky watercourse - such an incredible thing after the pitiful resources last night. After dumping my pack and emptying my pockets, taking my boots off and putting my flip-flops on, I waded in and baptised myself in the cool, clear waters. Heaven on earth!
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| Along the river |
I haven’t been able to find any disused vehicle track on the other side of the river, so I’ll just take the foot track opposite my camp site and bush-bash again southeast if necessary to reach the Zeka Spur 4WD track tomorrow.
There are little fairy wrens around here, flitting from rock to rock - lovely. It’s a lot warmer down in the valley too, although sitting right next to the water is cooler. There’s not much shade.
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| Along the river |
I can say with some certainty that I’m not keen to do a walk this hard again. It’s been a Bear Grylls-level challenge - today especially has felt like one of his episodes. No camera crew though!
I forgot to say: I found a leech sucking on my lower shin after walking along the river to get here. Took some persuasion to get it off!
