For a short while the trail was rocky and sandy and passed right next to some towering rock walks. I hoped that wasn’t the time for a large section to fall off! The trail climbed pretty quickly out of Ormiston Gorge and made its way gently uphill through completely burnt out country. The fires have absolutely devastated this landscape.
After a couple of hours the track made its way up towards the top of a hill and an amazing lookout back towards Mt Sonder, north towards Mt Giles and east along the path I’ll be traveling. The trail followed the super rocky ridgeline across a saddle and up to a higher lookout. There were cleared tent pads and some trees and it seemed quite sheltered. What a fantastic place to camp. No better place to see both sunset and sunrise. At the end of the day I found out the couple I’d meet on the way to Finke River (Sim and Kyle) camped up there and it was amazing.
I wish I could capture the views in photos or words. Absolutely stunning.At the top l met a couple taking advantage of the Telstra coverage. The guy described the upcoming descent as a mountain goat track and he definitely wasn’t wrong. Super rocky, uneven, big steps down, bit of scrambling. I was so glad to be going down it rather than up. The way I went up was much easier. At the bottom the track made its way along the rocky bottom of Waterfall Gorge. The perfect time and place to stop for lunch.
After lunch I continued climbing across the rocks through the gorge to the “waterfall” – completely non existent with everything as dry as it is. From there I walked through huge open valleys covered with spinifex and vertical shards of rock and more sweeping valleys of rocks.
A real highlight of the walk and something I hadn’t expected was Inalarga Pass. The pass was full of boulders that had tumbled from above and had lots of greenery including those really old plants we’d seen at Kings Canyon. Apparently it’s a sacred area for the indigenous people.
From there it was the home stretch to Serpentine Chalet Dam. There were quite a few people at the hikers camp. I caught up with Sim and Kyle again. They mentioned they’d underestimated the amount of food and because we have the equivalent of a supermarket in our car, l offered them some rice to go with their dinner. So Sim and l headed off on completely the wrong path to our car. Turns out we were headed down tomorrow’s track. Oops. I think we only got about 2kms before we realised!
My lovely Juber was there to collect me and take me back to Ormiston Gorge and a shower and delicious dinner. What a lovely day. And what sore feet – 28km through rocky terrain will do that!
Kerry's Hikes 