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Published: December 24th 2017
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Day 23
Noggerup Shelter to Grimwade Shelter
23 km
Chilly, chilly, chilly wake up call by the black cockatoo chorus. Coldest morning so far, I actually start out walking wearing a fleece, gloves
and the legs of my zip offs (first time so far). Took a little bit of walking for the feet to defrost. Easy terrain except that the slip factor is high. Take my first break after a couple of hours, having descended through a little oasis of peppermints, ferns, fungi and other assorted bushes. The frogs provided a backdrop to morning coffee.
Morning coffee also means morning snack- today's ration is vac packed fruit cake (heavy-ish I know, but oh so delicious. I actually find myself licking every last trace of sugary residue out of the bag- so delicious). Also totally enjoying my thermos (light-ish weight) boiling water, coffee and powdered milk (it seems to be better every day which is interesting as powdered milk has never been particularly awesome). While I'm on the subject of food, lunch today is cheese triangles and peanut paste on mountain bread wraps. When assembling all of my food packages I put little ziplock bags of peanut butter
inside vac sealed bags of the daily rations- unfortunately this technique has not been overly successful today- the oil in the pb has somehow leached out into the larger plastic bag and everything's a bit of an oily mess, leaving the pb dry and not very spreadable. The solution to this, however, is just eating it straight I guess! Same thing happened with the fruitcake- the sugary syrupy stuff in the cake has leached out too. Hard to describe exactly what I mean, but I will modify my technique next time- it's a good lesson in
Dehydrating 101. Super hungry today, despite porridge with dried fruit for breaky, the cake, the wraps, the cheese and the pb, I actually eat 2 rations of trail mix as well as my dinner - satay chicken with 2 min noodles, a mini mars bar, a milo and numerous teas and coffees.
Anyway, back to the day... it was a really enjoyable walk with a lot of diversity of trees (banksia groves, pine plantations, etc), fallen trees, very cute fungi and a mob of kangaroos. The last 5 kms had some steep up and down hills. The relative quiet was punctuated with some
new noises this afternoon- lots of clanking and what sounded like chainsaws- I think maybe timber clearing. Got into Grimwade at 15:30 - deserted with the last green book entry made 6 days ago. There were footprints about the place though! There was also split jarrah and other wood left undercover which was a bonus as it has gotten cold quite quickly this afternoon.
Re the footprints and the wood- no relationship, not human prints- they are possum prints. How do I know this? Well, the green book told me that the hut comes with a possum, which I then got to see, having come back from the loo in the pitch black at 20:30 and getting mildly freaked out to hear weird noises from inside the shelter. No need for panic- not a wild pig as I first imagined, only a 1 eyed, slow moving possum.
Impressions of Grimwade Shelter - Superb outlook, the trees look gorgeous as the sun goes down behind them. There's a mopoke around somewhere as well as a lot of red cap parrots. Body assessment- the noises in my ear started again (annoying, no idea what it is), slight soreness in my R calf (? muscle strain although I don't recall any injury/cause), apart from those things, the rest of it is good!
Total people seen for the day - 0
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