Day 5: Eaglevale to Moroka River Track 14/04/22 15kms 9hr 50

We were up and ready to head off by 7:15 this morning when Jubble realised he’d closed his phone inside the roof top tent. D’oh!  Our plan was for Jubble (Extreme Juber) to drive me along Moroka Junction Track as far as he could which would take 12kms off my day and hopefully make it achievable. My plan was to walk through the valley along Moroka River to Moroka River Track, a management trail,  and head up there to Jubbie waiting at the other end.  We agreed if the 4WD track was too difficult to get to the river, I’d skip that section and we’d head on to the next one. To be honest, I don’t know what I was hoping for – doing the walk would put me totally out of my comfort zone and not doing it would be disappointing. Fate decided, the track was ok and Jubble left me at the end of the 4WD track next to the river.

There was a well defined little track along the side of the river which passed through grassy areas and lightly wooded areas, all very easy to walk through. I went until I couldn’t go further and did my first crossing. It was pretty simple, not too deep, not too fast flowing. I rolled my pants up to cross and then rolled them back down on the other side. I can tell you, that didn’t last too long. Before long I was walking straight in without thinking of my pants getting wet. I spent the day crossing from one side of the river to the other, bush bashing sometimes, following animal paths (clearly made by animals much shorter than me!), sometimes finding flats to walk easily along, getting to another bluff and having to cross the river again. Thank goodness not too many blackberries. It was super slow going for me. While bush bashing through very dense scrub I found myself thinking I bet this isn’t the route the Chapmans take (they’re the authors of several hiking books).

At one point 6 hours in, I couldn’t find anywhere to cross. I was almost at a bluff and it all looked to deep or too fast. I back tracked, but no luck. I started to think of where I’d sleep if I had to stay down there for the night. After backtracking to no avail, I decided the only thing left to do was go right up to the bluff and try again. Success! I finally found somewhere to cross that ended up being waist deep (luckily I put my phone in a dry bag before heading across). Turns out it’s hard to keep your footing when the water is that high, but luckily I managed to. I only had one real slip during the day. I stepped into the water and slipped on a slimy rock. I was right next to a big rock which I was able to grab onto and pull myself back out. That’s the first time I got waist deep wet. Before that I’d been worried about higher than thigh deep, after that it didn’t matter any more!

I had three more crossings to do and none were too bad. For the very last one I had to backtrack to find shallow enough water. By that stage it had taken me 8 hours (the book said 5 hours) and I was stressed. But so relieved to finally get to the management trail and away from the fucking river crossings. I think I would have enjoyed today so much more with someone else to share it all with. I sat and ate my late lunch and changed shoes and socks – so nice to have dry feet- and headed off up the management trail at 4:30. OMG it was steep. It was so steep in parts my feet were slipping backwards and at one point I had to put my hands on the ground to get to the top of a rise. I climbed as fast as I could. It took me almost 1.5 hours to get up the steepest parts. Finally it flattened out a little (well not flat, but less steep) and I could pick up my pace. It was cold but I was hot as long as I kept moving. But it was so far to the top. After almost 2 hours I got to a clearing and found some headlights coming towards me. Extreme Juber!! No word to say how happy I was to see him. Turns out he’d walked from the top of the track 3kms to where he ended up picking me up. He was worried I was still so far away, so jogged back to the car and drove back to find me. So thankful that track was drivable.

I am so grateful for being picked up. It was a long drive back to the main road – I reckon it would have taken me at least an hour to walk. We found a camping area and the first thing I did was take off my wet clothes amd put on dry extra warm ones. It was 9 degrees and being in wet pants and half my top to the waist was not pleasant. Jubble made a delicious veggie tofu fried rice and we also demolished a packet of chips then went straight to bed. Jubble had driven 200kms to get to me. We had both been pretty stressed and by the end were exhausted.

I’m glad I did today. When I’m doing something challenging I tell myself I can do hard things. This was another hard thing I’ve shown myself I can do. It was absolutely out of my comfort zone and I’ve learned more about crossing rivers. But I’m very glad it’s finished and even more glad that I got to spend the night in out roof top tent not on the side of a river wrapped in my emergency blanket!