Trip Date: 23 May 2015
Trip Leader: Charlie Grasso
Vehicles attending: 4
Members attending: 6
Visitors attending: 5
Trip Summary:
Sat 23 May Meeting at Richmond on time for a slightly late departure we headed off to the old Ben Bullen Station for morning tea and airing down before hitting the trail. The days of rain leading up to today have made very little impact on our trail leaving it fairly dry considering. We made our way to Baal Bone Gap where we lined up for a photo shoot, had a little look around and a chat with another 4WD Club visiting from the Southern Region.
It didn’t take too long once on the trail again to be held up at the biggest challenge the track had to offer, waiting for 5 others to make their way down the 45 degree rock face and the rest of the slope. Once we had done our track inspection and discussed our approach’s we cleared the track for my first attempt and my first run with the new front locker. With some guidance from our fearless leader “Roger Ranger” just crawled smoothly and continuously without breaking traction all the way to the top making it look all too easy.
With only the front locked Brett took on the rock step, bouncing the Patrol all over the shop, but not giving up on that path he got it up without having to be winched. Next was our visitor with an open diff Hilux giving in to trying out his new winch. Bending his winch cradle on the way he was up after a very slow ride in toe. The last car up was Mark in the Hummer hoping not to have to use his new winch unfortunately “Huma H3” was caught drifting under spinning wheels and kissed a tree to stop his effort and put the new winch set up to the test.
Finding a spot to stop and a well deserved lunch break we all had a chance to exchange our experiences of the challenge.
Continuing on we stopped off at a clearing in the track revealing a fantastic view of the Walgan Valley leading into Newnes far below us. With a blue sky back drop the rock escarpments channelled their way into the distance giving us yet another magnificent view of this canyon that is bigger than the American one. I tell you if we were an older country than them I reckon ours would be known as the “Grand” canyon because there is no other way to describe it. From here one more narly decent and down, down, down to the tar at the cross roads on Walgan Valley Gap Rd for our drive into Newnes. Since the Emirates resort has been built the road has been sealed to within 9km of the Newnes Camping Grounds. It was goodbye to Brett and Sue from here heading back home for work tomorrow.
A quick check of the Coke Oven ruins and set up camp just before dark. Our trip leader (AKA me) had forgotten to pack tent poles in his excitement packing for the trip and bunked up in the annexe of the visitor’s tent, which luckily was large enough to accommodate two. We were visited by fury little friends with one thinking he might hitch a ride in the morning. We had brought along plenty of wood for what became a very cold night and you couldn’t be too far from the fire before feeling just how cold it really was. The telling sign was Mark not only put his dry-as-bone on he even put his thongs on.
Sun 15 March; After having a most chilling night, never remembering being that cold in a sub zero sleeping bag before, we awoke to a big foggy cloud mass filling the valley floor with glimpses of sky above the escarpments. As Mark and Pat had to head off early it was only Shirley and I with our visitors who requested to see the Glow Worm Tunnel. Pack up camp and back to the cross roads we picked up Black Fellow Hands Trail, then onto te Glow Worm Tunnel Road and then returning via Clarence at The Zig Zag Railway Station to air back up and depart to a separate ways.
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