Day 2 began after what seemed to be the longest night ever. We all slept restlessly, drifting in and out of fits of dreams all night.
I was first up the next morning at 6:30am, and unzipped my tent just in time to see a mountain runner jog past like it was the easiest thing in the world. We bid each other g'day as he continued on, muscular and glistening in the morning sun, and I crawled slowly towards the nearby compost toilet (read: gaping hole full of shit).
Urgh.
Gradually, everyone got up, ate a quick breakfast of mush, and continued on. About 20 minutes into our Day 2 hike, we came to a rocky clearing where someone had evidently gathered a lot of twigs and spelt out “HI MUM!” with them.
Being the hilaaaaarious people that we are, we instantly named this rock “Hymen Rock”, and proceeded to show off our astounding level maturity by doing star jumps all over Hymen Rock.
Having expended a lot needless energy jumping around, we soldiered on into the bush, occasionally stopping to admire the native flora and fauna in the area - gum trees, banksias, wallabies Eastern Grey kangaroos, who jumped onto our track a few times, looking alarmed at the intruders in its ‘hood.
About 1.5 hrs later, we arrived at our designated campsite of the day - Honeysuckle Creek, where we were finally able to fill up some water from the rain water tanks.
Fun fact I found out about Honeysuckle Creek only after the hike: it was a former NASA tracking station who provided the world with the first pictures of the Apollo 11 moonwalk!
While we cannot claim to be taking giant footsteps for mankind ourselves, we did decide if that we wanted this to be a proper hike, we probably needed to walk for more than half a day.
So we set up tents for the day, had a quick lunch, repacked our bags full of water, food and weighty objects, and set off for a practice hike towards a rocky, steep area nearby full of large boulders, known colloquially as “Legoland”.
The return trip, which was about 10KMs in total, was probably the hardest hike of our entire trip. The road started off deceivingly easy - it was well maintained enough for the ocasional car to drive past, and at least initially level.
But before long, it became evident why people drive, and not hike, to Legoland. Bend after bend, our track morphed into a relentless, steep incline along Orroral Ridge.
I soon found myself lagging behind, wanting to give up, but peer pressured to keep walking. After about an hour and a half of breathless crawl, we came upon a group of day hikers on their way down from the top of the ridge.
“You’re almost there! I’d say about 15 minutes.” They told us.
“THAT’S WHAT THE GUY YESTERDAY SAID.” I sobbed through a waterfall of snot, sweat and tears.
They cracked up laughing. “I promise. 5 minutes if you race yourselves.”
Race ourselves? Over this fucking terrain with our 40L packs? I think not.
But lie they did not. About 20 minutes later, we made it to the top of Orroral Ridge to an area marked simply as “Large Boulders” on our map.
Thankfully, local rock climbers have devised slightly more creative names for this area: Legoland, the Cloisters, the Tower … all attempts at describing these large - impossibly large - rocks perched at the top of the mountain, forming a cliff face sorts that look out into the valley.
They were remarkable, and would’ve been a tourist attraction worthy of its own ice-cream stand in any other country. Incredibly, only a few rock-climbers seem to know about this area at all.
We met one such rock climber, who kindly showed us a way of squeezing through the rocks, lying on our stomaches, and rolling out from underneath a bunch of rocks that would’ve blocked our panoramic views.
We followed his advice and came out the other side of a pile of boulders to find ourselves sitting on the outside rim of the rocks, with the most spectacular view of the Canberra region.
The afternoon sun was setting by then. We needed to rush back to the campsite so that we may have a bit of daylight left for cooking and chores.
But for 25 minutes we lingered, and for 25 minutes, it felt like we had been let onto a secret no one else knew.
xx doots
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