Southern Ranges: Day Five

Wake each morning with the sun burning stronger than the last. Fill containers from tiny soaks and depart tranquility with some trepidation.

Encounter mere waist high scrub and make good time to the first knoll. At the base of the subsequent descent, scout around knee deep in a brightly lit swamp with no apparent exit.

Locate clues in the form of a solitary faded tape fragment and some helpfully bent twigs, climb onto Kameruka Moraine.

Methodically progress along the broken ridge line. Lose the trail on the final descent to the saddle before PB and forge a path through heavy scrub. Stumble on the lumpy stumps of Low Camp, a touch under six slow hours from Wylly Plateau.

Select the most directly western route from a maze of pads in every direction leading god knows where. Within a few lucky minutes find the cut track up PB. Negotiate a clambery bit… beyond, a rock staircase.

Relax at High Camp sweltering in late afternoon sun slanting low over the parapet to the west. Leave socks and shorts to bake on warm flat rocks. Luxuriously survey the entire route from Pindars, laid out far below.

Keep company with the sun as it sinks over New River Lagoon and beyond to Ile du Golfe and the Maatsuyker group, a single fluffy cloud crowning Temple Point on De Witt island. Recline in the quiet night and disappear into galaxies of stars spreading infinite across the milky way.

Find peace.

Approximate walking time and distance: 7 hours, 6km