Adam and I hoped to leverage a "free" vacation day around Melbourne Cup Day, on which the entire State of Victoria shuts down for a horse race. We planned a lovely 4-day overnight hiking/camping trip, followed by 2 days of wine tasting, in the Grampians. Of course, my client decided that this was the week of "Go!" After postponing our vacation and Italy's debt blowing up, my client went from Go, to Maybe Go, to Thinking about Going, to Not sure about Going, to No Go. I went from sane, to partially sane, to partially insane, to predominantly insane, to I'll find you $3 Billion myself, leave me the f alone.
We rescheduled an abbreviated version of our vacation for last week, only to have my favorite above-referenced client decide at 5pm the night before our departure to "Go". Luckily for me (and Adam), I have an amazing colleague who offered to help out so we could take our mini-getaway. I kind of guilted her into it by telling her that Adam had already packed "snack-packs" for us! Adam picked me up at the office at 8am after an all-nighter and we finally made the 4 hour drive to begin hiking and wine tasting in the Grampians .
We did a couple shorter hikes Thursday afternoon, then headed to the campsite and settled in for the night. We started our overnight hike up Mt Difficult on Friday morning. I hadn't had much time to put any effort into planning this trip, and given the fact that most parts of Victoria we've seen so far have been fairly flat, I had a notion that a hike up Mt Difficult would be more of a "bush walk" (as they often say here). Not so much.
The first 500 meters or so was a bush walk. Then we came upon a rock wall. I looked around for the yellow arrow trailmarkers to see how we were supposed to get around this rock wall, only to find that we were supposed to scale it. We eventually conquered that and shortly thereafter I traded the big backpack to Adam in exchange for the small pack that he was carrying. About 5 steps later, I took all the water out of the small backpack and added that to the big pack, which had previously only held a couple of sleeping bags (feathers), a couple of pillows (cotton), and a tent (cloth with a few metal poles). Oops, I guess I should have gotten some sleep in advance of this trip.
We continued on, often ascending very steeply, until we encountered an essentially flat section of the trail (relief!) that turned out to be crowded with various boulders, rock formations and crevices (hmm...kinda wishing I never saw the movie "127 Hours"). It turned out to be our favorite part of the hike, trying to figure out whether it made more sense to crawl through the crevice or scramble over the rock formation, risk leaping off a big rock or cautiously sliding down on our butts.
We made it to the Mt Difficult Bush Campsite just as it started to drizzle, dropped our packs and headed for the summit. By the time we scrambled to the top (sans trail), the drizzle had turned into more of a ferocious wind and thunderstorm. We snapped one quick picture and headed back to the campsite.
Lots more stories to tell, just ask away. Here are some ideas if you don't know what to ask about:
Aboriginal Art
Olive Oil
Sparkling Shiraz
Town Hall Film Festival
Kangaroo named Lemon Tree
The Balconies
Waterfalls
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