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Day Two: 30 December 2008 Blakes Shelter to Cracroft Crossing Walking Time - 9 Hours |
| Susan's Diary |
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Day
2: Today we aimed to make it to
Cracroft Crossing and possibly even to Pass Creek. We had set the alarm
for 6am, however it was turned off at 6am and we ended up getting up at
7am. We did very badly at packing too, and set off at 9:45am. After having
prepared breakfast in Blake’s Shelter due to intermittent rain, we were
prepared for the ups and downs of the Yo Yo Track and it didn’t seem too
bad. Some of the climbs were a bit steep, while others were quite gentle.
We stopped for lunch at Harrison’s Creek at 12:30pm which seemed an okay time. We had a long lunch and were on our way at 1.45pm. The weather had been mixed, with patches of rain and sun, and the temperature was generally low. With much relief, we finished McKay’s Spur at around 4:30pm and enjoyed a Mars Bar on the side of the Cracroft River, our first views of it. At this stage we had about 3.5kms to go and thought we may even be at the campsite by 5:30pm. Just before 6pm we reached the first campsites on the eastern bank of the Cracroft. There we met five walkers who had started out at the Yo-Yo Track quite tiring and had revised their plans for attempting Federation Peak within their seven day timeframe, i.e. they didn’t have time to attempt it given their slow progress. They were planning on going to Pass Creek tomorrow and doing a day walk up Luckmans Lead the day after. We said our goodbye’s and made our way down to the river crossing passing a beautiful, big, sheltered and unoccupied campsite. However, we had been told you should always make camp on the side of the river that you are walking on the following day (in Tasmania) in case it floods, so we made plans for crossing. The river was flowing quite quickly and it was hard to judge the depth the main crossing, so we went to see if crossing at the log jam was any better. It wasn’t. Luca bravely changed into his clogs and ventured into the water to find the best crossing point. Luckily the water appeared much to be much deeper than it was and it only reached his knees during the forty metre crossing. Luca then came back and we crossed together with our packs. As we expected the campsites to be near the crossing we continued walking in our clogs. After 5 minutes the trees cleared and we came out into an opening with a sign about camping at Cracroft and a very exposed campsite amongst the burnt trees. We briefly contemplated crossing the river back again, then put down our bags to go and collect water from the Cracroft and check for better campsites. Halfway back, with much relief we came across two reasonable spots and after collecting water we returned with our packs and began setting up camp at 7:30pm. We cooked and ate Indian rice for dinner under the fly with the company of a couple of mosquitoes, then went to sleep quickly after having a couple of Cadbury balls for dessert.
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| Day 2 Photos: | |||
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| Preparing breakfast in Blake's shelter | |||
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| Nice wide section of track | |||
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