Bushwalk Australia

There's lots of people on tonight, and no one posting, so here's something to liven up the party!

What's your single best/favourite/most memorable moment from a bushwalking trip?

Mine would be a three way tie between running almost head-first into a black bear on the Appalachian Trial early in the morning when I was walking alone, almost getting flattened by a buck (on the same stretch actually) who had been grazing about 2 metres off the side of trail on a sharp bend, so that when I came around the corner we were standing face-to-face, literally, or maybe a certain not-to-be-described adventure at the age of 16 in Pisgah National Forest involving myself and a fellow church camp member named April.

Well, I guess my favourite would have to be the one that didn't involve near-goreing or mauling. LOL

I was tempted with all the cheeky literal interpretations of your last one, this time is even more tempting
But I wont, i'll think of a more appropriate 'event'.....

Oh....I just got the "cheeky literal" bit. DOH!

LOL- Unfortunately (or maybe it is fortunate)- I'm not really with it enough to be THAT clever LOL

After dreaming of a move to Tassie since the age of 14 or so, and reading about an expedition up Mt. Anne at an early age, it stood up as something I had to do, no matter what.

It has to be my successful summit attempt, after 2 failed attempts.

I tried twice without ever seeing the Anne massif for real, cloud and rain turned me back twice.

The third attempt I started in darkness so I couldn't see the peak from SPR and never saw it until the Eliza plateau, the rush was spiritual and the day was perfect.
I summited in perfect weather(could strike a match) and spent an hour on top, before reluctantly departing.

Trundled down to SPR in a delirious state to knock off a 6 pack of my favorite ale,ate a lovely tikka masala set up camp and slept soooo well.

Whatever your dream is, the day you achieve it you understand perfectly what clarity of thought truly is.

My achievement was no big deal to most(particularly on this site), but it stands as a beacon to me as to what I can do, after all at the end of the day you only have yourself to challenge, and on that day I felt like I could do anything....

Third time lucky eh!

Its a hard one to answer, there have been many 'magical' moments, mostly involving views, peaks reached etc.

One very memorable occasion happened camping on a beach on Fraser Island (ok we were sea kayaking but it did fit with 'in the bush' lol) After an exhausting day we had set up camp, had a meal and were lying back on the sand supping a nice red. We were high on the beach near the she oak's and the camp. I dont recall the first one that I saw, it seemed they 'appeared' from nowhere and were totally unexpected. I thought it was the red (or the green)..... Fireflys , and by the hundreds.... They seemed to hover in a radius of a few meters, not coming closer and back through the trees as far as I could focus. Thought I was seeing fairies, had no idea for the first few seconds whether to run (or skul) My partner(at that time) broke the illusion , she had grown up in the area but was still in awe of their numbers and how bright they shone in the dark night surrounding us.

I have only seen fireflies once – up on a station in the Kimberley. I thought at the time that there was something wrong with my eyes. I had never realized that they blinked on and off the way they do. My Dad thought my amazement and initial confusion was hilarious.

… Perhaps not truly a bushwalking experience and perhaps not the most awe inspiring moment out bush – but just recently while I was out riding my bike in a small bush reserve I saw Rainbow Bee Eaters for the first time since I was a child. I didn't know that we got them in Perth. It was a very special moment for me, as I had thought of them often in the intervening years.

When I was little we used to visit a station near Port Hedland that my parents had worked on in the early sixties. Their second child drowned in the pool there. When we were there I spent a lot of time in the pool where I would imagine that I could talk to him. Despite never having known him he was always a big part of our lives.

The pool was made of concrete and rocks from the area (full of sea shells) and was always thick with algae and alive with huge water beetles that we called "Toe Biters", water skimmers and the odd snake. The Bee Eaters came every summer and would swoop the pool for the bugs that were so prolific there. It was surrounded by Tamarisk trees, a Moreton Bay fig and bougainvillea and was fed by its own tank and mill. I would lie in the green water at the bottom looking at the light on the surface of the pool, and when I surfaced there was always the sound of the wind hushing through the tamarisk leaves, cicadas singing in the heat, the mill turning and Bee Eaters calling overhead. It is a memory that is eternally summer for me.

When I saw the Bee Eaters again for the first time in so long last year, it came hard on the heels of my decision to leave Perth and Western Australia. Riding down the trail, a pair flew past and then ahead of me – flashing bronze and blue and green in the afternoon light. They took my breath away. I stood for an hour until I lost the light and watched them and listened to their familiar calls - remembering. It was comforting and wonderful to see them. It somehow made my decision to move on seem okay at last.

Not sure if there are Bee Eaters in Tassie…

(Sorry. That was long.)

Great post sml_12

Stuart

sml_12 wrote:
(Sorry. That was long.)

Long, but very evocative, having left Perth for Tassie 3 years ago, I understand the pull of memories and those moments of clarity.
Swimming in the estuary of the Moore River at night during a thunderstorm with my late father is one of those moments, feeling safe and protected in the eye of the storm...
I still long for the warm nights, water, and big sky of the West. It will always be home for me no matter where I go and I'm sure every time you go back sml_12 WA will welcome you, as will Tassie

sml_12 wrote:Not sure if there are Bee Eaters in Tassie…

No. A pity, really, they're a beautiful and evocative bird.

I don't have one single best moment. What I do have is . . . this is difficult to explain . . . *girds loins*

Some years ago I saw a low-budget Japanese movie on SBS, called AfterLife. The basic premise was that when people die they don't immediately go off 'somewhere else', but pass to a sort of holding place. There, they chose a memory, which is recreated for them and which is the one and only thing they take with them, the only thing they remember wherever they go next.

It kind of got me thinking. A lot. There are many memories it would be difficult to let go of; people, places, events, feelings, sights . . . but in the end I realised that if there was something beyond life and I could remember anything of this life, what I wanted to take with me was a particular feeling. Not from any one time or place, but one that's kept me sane all these years. I've had it diving, caving, beaching, but most of all out in the bush, alone. I'm sure some of you know it, too.
You've struggled and sweated for hours - sometimes days - on end. Through scrub and mud and water, over rocks and fallen trees and creeks, and you're there - could be anywhere, but for me it's mostly peaks. The whole world is laid out below you, and you're so intensely alive, so totally in the place and the moment, that it's a kind of Nirvana - unity with the whole of existence.
As Byron put it:

And thus I am absorbed, and this is life

(and elsewhere)
I live not in myself, but become portion of that around me and, to me, high mountains are a feeling . . .

*ahem*

Sorry about all the metaphysical claptrap.
And the poetry.

But you did ask . . .

But that's my memory. My best thing about the bush. I don't ever want to be able to go out there and not feel that. Losing that would be a worse death than anything else.

Great question camera poser, and some very good responses from scavenger, sml, step by step et al. It's so hard to answer the question: a bit like asking a parent "who's your favourite child?"

One of the great moments for me would have to be ascending Federation Peak (in 1991). I've been posting and blogging about that elsewhere. See http://auntyscuttle.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... rt-11.html A week in the Western Arthur Range in the 1980s remains one of the very best walks I've ever done, and a more recent walk across the Du Cane Range was memorable. But for the sheer amount of "wow" in one day - and it's hard for a rusted-on Taswegian to admit this - I would have to say a side-trip earlier this year to Cascade Saddle in NZ's Mt Aspiring National Park tops my list.

The Saddle straddles the divide between the West Matukituki and Dart valleys in the heart of the South Island's big mountain country. I'd been tramping in places like the Routeburn and Kepler Tracks and the Mt Aspiring/Tititea area over the years. I'm an addicted reader of Moir's Guides, but being a non-climbing tramper, I'd limited my ambitions to non-technical high places. Cascade Saddle always seemed to stand out in trip descriptions as one of the best such destinations.

Well this March we struck perfect conditions while walking the Rees-Dart Track (a superb walk BTW). I'd planned our "rest day" at Dart Hut to allow for the possibility of a side trip to Cascade Saddle if the weather smiled. As it happens, it beamed! The day walk (from the Dart valley side) takes you along the upper Dart valley. You sidle up valley, crossing numerous busy side-streams, through patches of forest but mostly on open tussock. You're reminded that this is a working glacial valley when bits of the nearby hanging glaciers occasionally crash into the valley (not too near the track!) The track eventually tip-toes around the grey, industrial maw of the Dart Glacier itself. And then it's all steeply up open tussock to the saddle.

I doubt there could be a more inspiring place to stop for lunch. Feet dangling 1000m above the Matukituki Valley; snow-capped mountains and glaciers all around; and the pyramid of Mt Aspiring/Tititea uppermost among its mountain siblings. Picture can't do it justice, but one is attached anyway.



It's moments like this that make all the pain worth it,

cheers

Peter

Like the rest of you, I've had several. I like to think that one isn't better than the other, they're just different (like people).
So, walking to the edge of the saddle between Eliza and Mount Anne and seeing Lake Judd was certainly one - mindblowing, I didn't even know it existed.
Going into the gorges of Karijini - fabulous, a photographer's paradise.
Waterfalls anywhere, but probably Gloucester Falls are my current favourite.
The Glow Worm Cave walk from Newnes - fern forests, massive sandstone walls, abundant bird life and glow worms in the old railway tunnel.
Wimbach Schloss trail near Berchtesgaden in Germany - unbelieveable geology with Germany's highest mountain beside you.
Picos de Europa - Europe's biggest national park in Spain - spectacular scenery and an amazing cable car to boot.
The Bastei near Koenigstein in Germany overlooking the Elbe - Unforgettable sandstone formations and to-die-for views over the Elbe.
Waterfall Way - I think this stunner is one of the most under rated walks I've ever seen, definitely one of Tassie's finest.

scavenger wrote:
I don't have one single best moment. What I do have is . . .<Snip> . . . a particular feeling. Not from any one time or place, but one that's kept me sane all these years. I've had it diving, caving, beaching, but most of all out in the bush, alone. I'm sure some of you know it, too. <Snip> The whole world is laid out below you, and you're so intensely alive, so totally in the place and the moment, that it's a kind of Nirvana - unity with the whole of existence.
As Byron put it:

And thus I am absorbed, and this is life

(and elsewhere)
I live not in myself, but become portion of that around me and, to me, high mountains are a feeling . . .

*ahem*

Sorry about all the metaphysical claptrap.
And the poetry.

But you did ask . . .

But that's my memory. My best thing about the bush. I don't ever want to be able to go out there and not feel that. Losing that would be a worse death than anything else.

I have made some mention of this aspect of going walking in this thread - viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1895 - and the only time I was ever inspired to write real poetry (out of school) was in a crude attempt to put such a "feeling" into words after an experience out walking that in retrospect became a piviotal life event that I can still vividly recall to this day. The poem was published in the Brisbane Bushwalkers magazine in 1970, and as it's etched in my memory, I might think about starting a poetry topic

Hey Tas-man, thanks for that link - I had forgotten I gave such a detailed account of my first Mt Anne attempt in that topic.
I have no single best moment bushwalking, they're all great. Some are exceptional. That feeling you get when you reach the summit of a significant peak and look over the other side, that's pretty special. Sometimes the beauty of nature around you, that's pretty good too. But I can't reflect on one particular single moment to call it the best.

The best moment for me was taking my wife and kids on the the circuit walk from Scout Lodge up the Horse Track to Kitchen Hut back via Marions ,Crater Lake and back and not telling them how far it was.
Wife and Daughter are not walkers so it was a real buzz for them to "do a walk" and with the Mountain being kind to us including nice snow in Marrigold Valley it will remain as a never to be repeated highlight.
To top it off I found the Photographs only recently and we were all so young
c

corvus wrote:The best moment for me was taking my wife
Wife and Daughter are not walkers
c

My wife isn't a walker and man did she complain as I took her up Marions, with the constant encouragement coming from myself that the peak was only another 50m
Still to this day the photo of the smile on her face brings me a warm glow, she finally got an inkling as to what I'm all about.....the reward for effort and the deafening silence of a wild place
The weather was perfect and not a soul in sight, indeed a v. rare thing in that area.....still I prefer to go on my own

One of my best (correction, most memourable) moments was when 4 of us went for a day trip to walk Mount Pillinger one summers day about 6 years ago. We were travelling along the Arm Rd and approaching the intersection that takes you to the start of the track when we drove over a branch (quite a large one in hindsight) that 'flicked up' and hit the bottom of the car.......anyway, as we kept on going the car started doing 'kangaroo hops' to the point that it started stalling. We got out (practically outside the intersection that leads up to the track start point.......we were SOOOO close!!) and popped the bonnet and started inspecting what may be going on whilst trying to start the car over and over again (do you think any of us have the faintest clue about the mechanics of a car ).

Because there was no mobile phone reception in there, we figured that we'd have to start heading back (this was at about 10am). We were able to push the car and roll down a few hills for a short distance before realising that we'd have to start on foot. After walking quite a few kilometres, we came across an old hut with smoke coming out of the chimney and met a charming old man by the name of Max (I'll never forget him). He invited us in for a couple of beers and some wonderful old stories (which included tales of spotting Tasmanian Tigers) before we reminded him of his offer to tow us out of our predicement. He towed us all the way to the final downhill descent to Mersey Forest rd at which point we rolled down ourselves (and he drove back to his hut).

Problem was that there was still no mobile reception so we started wandering along Mersey Forest Rd! At about dusk (it must have been close to 8pm) we waved down a motorist who was heading in to Lake Rowallan to do some fishing who then kindly drove us out to mobile reception to call for the Father in-law to bring the tandem trailer. At this point, we felt much more at ease, set up a small camp fire on the shoulder of the road and ate the rest of our food until the cavalry arrived.

We finally got back to town with the car on the trailer at about 1:30am (remembering that the car originally broke down just before 10am!!

Although things didn't go as planned that day, it is still the adventure that gets talked about the most and always brings a smile to our faces!

btw, the branch had busted the fuel pipe if I recall correctly.......