17
Climbing the mountain
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We’d been advised by OXFAM, rightly, to steer clear of the areas where the bushfires had been or were threatening. This was in the interest of walker safety and out of consideration for those directly affected by the fires. Again, rightly so. But this put the kybosh on our planned walk from Woori Yallock (CP7) to CP8 and then over Mt Littlejoe and back. We changed our plans to do the Mt Dandenong fire trail a couple of times instead.
The fire trail is a track (or creek washaway) that climbs from Glasgow Road in Montrose up to the television towers at the top of the mountain. The carpark is at 200m, the sealed road climbs up to 330m, and then the trial continues up to 610m.
Mt Dandenong Fire Trail
So if my maths is reasonably good, the overall climb is 410m over just over a klm or an average of 1:24 climb. The fire trail section climbs 280m in 450m, or a 1:1.6 gradient, which is not trivial.
We met at 9am-ish. After a few late arrivals we started climbing at about 9:20. It took about 40mins to do the first climb to the top. My calves were feeling it, but otherwise I felt great (heart racing at each stop but it settled down fairly quickly). Tony indicated this was a little slow, but was a good first effort. We passed a few people on their way down; it must be a popular route. The last section is quite steep, and I could feel the vertigo coming on when looking back down at one stage (good excuse to push on).
Rather than coming back down the track we contoured around the top on a trial and then wound our way back down to the start of the fire trail. Overall this took about 2 hours.
After a short lunch we headed up the trail again. This was quicker with many in the team taking 25mins to get to the top. Evan was feeling the rocks he put in his pack! Again we wound down the hill rather than going straight back down the fire trail. My knees were grateful for the call.
The walk was arduous, and particularly hard work on the leg muscles and cardio, but didn’t leave us dead (like last week’s 40klms). Hopefully this is a sign of increased leg strength and overall fitness. We capped the day off with milkshakes at Hahndorf in Montrose!
Next week is a short (18klm) night walk over some of the mountain section (Olinda to Silvan Res. I think). It will be a good test of our night walking abilities.
