On the Saturday after the end of my last post I went hiking at Black Rocks. I’d never hiked there before and I was rather glad that I’d ended up going during the winter as I think the rocky beach you walk along would have been a bit boring in the summer. In the winter however, with frozen waterfalls and ice everywhere it was very very cool and made for a rather enjoyable walk. After the beach I tried walking one of the last well-traveled paths. Up to that point all the trails had been nice and compacted and so I hadn’t brought snowshoes. Turns out they were rather required on the less popular trail so after slogging on without them for too long I turned round and re-traced my steps. All in a all a thoroughly enjoyable day, the photos form which are here.
Sunday it stormed. As it did on Wednesday. And the following Saturday. There had been some talk of the last of these being rain rather than snow but we only got snow where I am. On the Friday I went for a snowshoe around the local park (photos) and saw the Eagles again. On the Sunday I walked down to swimming but there’s not a whole lot more exciting to report.
The following week things started to get warmer so on the Wednesday afternoon I thought I’d get out for a snowshoe while I still could. I headed to Woodville again to explore some of the bits I hadn’t already. The highlight was seeing a little abandoned bird’s nest in a tree (photos). As per normal I bouldered on the Thursday evening but I ended up banging me knee which resulted in it hurting for a few days. As people may remember from previous posts my knees haven’t been quite right for a while and although they’re generally quite good again they still play up if I knock them in the wrong place, which I evidently did. This meant I didn’t boulder on the Friday but I did go and meet my friends – partly to plan the next evening – and we went to the pub afterwards which made for an enjoyable change.
The Saturday was the day before my birthday and we’d decided to do something that evening as it wasn’t a school night. After going for a swim in the early afternoon I met up with some of my friends from bouldering later in the afternoon for a few games of pool and ping pong and table tennis at a bar. After that we headed to the Port Pub for dinner and drinks. All in all I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Thanks everyone!
There was a bit of a slow start to my actual birthday but in the late afternoon I decided to visit Mount Uniacke – still my favourite local place to go hiking. Turns out there was rather ore snow left there than I was expecting and I was glad I had brought my snowshoes along. Was a very enjoyable couple of hours. Photos are here. Fed up with photos of snow yet? Well I’m starting to get fed up with snow although it mostly remained mild and the snow slowly decreased over the next week although there was still plenty left by Easter weekend.
Good Friday turned out to be a much nicer day than predicted. Thanks to the crappy forecast I had an incredibly lazy start to the day so didn’t have time to get up to anything too exciting. I decided I wanted to do something other than snowshoeing so instead went for a hike along the abandoned railway line reasonably near here. The section I hike was also used by snowmobiles so would hopefully be reasonably compact – which it was. Snowmobiling was technically banned after the end of March but I still saw one. For an abandoned railway line it was really quite scenic in a few places (photos). I’ve now hiked quite a few little bits of it and have generally been quite impressed.
Saturday the weather did indeed turn out to be a bit useless, as forecast, with rain and mist most of the day. Part of me was disappointed it was raining as it meant I couldn’t get out and do something exciting. On the other hand part of me was quit pleased, after all if it’s raining it’s not snowing! So instead I went to the bouldering gym where I had a good session. After a few weeks of not being into quite as much as I normally am I seem to have got back into the swing of things. I quite often go through little periods like that so it was no surprise, although it’s always nice when it’s over.
It would appear that getting one days forecast right was about all that they could manage. Sunday they forecast flurries but it started nice and sunny. After a semi-lazy start I drove about an hour away to go for a hike or snowshoe. Turned out the trail was pretty compacted so I didn’t use the snowshoes. One of the trails marked on the map didn’t appear to yet exist on the ground. I think I found where it broadly went but didn’t fancy the look of it without snowshoes, as the path that did exist went downhill quite steeply. That meant I ended up hiking in the woods rather than along the river and so it wasn’t very exciting. The further I walked in the worse the weather, and the less compacted the trail, got so eventually I decided to turn around. Good job I did as the weather continued to go down hill.
On the way out I heard some shouting and it was worrying enough that I had decided that I was going to do something about it when I got back to the parking lot. A bit further on however I met some people by where the trail by the river went and although they were a little way off they were shouting at their dogs that had come to investigate me and everything seemed fine. A bit further on again I came across a group of fireman as apparently someone was lost. I told them where I saw people and went on my way – I was under dressed for the conditions as it was certainly now much more than flurries and I wanted out!
When I got to the parking lot there was, unsurprisingly quite a lot of activity – including a stuck ambulance that meant I couldn’t currently go anywhere even if I wanted to! I told the fireman and police there what I knew about the group I’d seen but it was soon established they were camping there and not lost. I then wondered if the shouts I heard hadn’t been from them after all. They had seemed to have come from a different direction but it would have been easy to get that wrong in the conditions. Apparently the group that were lost were totally unequipped for the conditions and wearing jeans so it came as a relief when after about an hour they were found. As I could definitely no longer by of any help I got on my way – the ambulance by now having been moved.
So that was a bit of an exciting afternoon. And it seems to continue my run of having some dealings with search and rescue type people roughly every two years. All the previous ones have been climbing related but I hope this one counts and I can go for another two years before dealing with anything similar. Of course it would be great to go for longer, much, much longer, but I do seem to be set in some sort of pattern. I was always going to end this post today but all the excitement has turned it from possibly a short one into quite a long one. Hopefully I’ll be good and the next post will be prompt… seems unlikely though!
P.S. Definitely had enough of snow now!