Day 2
We should have known, we should have known!! Another epic in the making with the first few kilometres of Tiger Trail being "Steep" uphill. Grannie quickly turned to PUSH biking and excellent training for Phil and Kokoda in a couple of weeks.
No worries, the traverse would come soon. Richard kept an eye on the altitude. 300m start at Khancoban. We reached about 900m around lunch. Hang on. The lunch stop is a little short of the top of the mountain at 1,515m! It's ok, we can do it, the traverse will come soon. But it didn't. It was up and down, and up and down, 900m down to 700m, then up to 1,000m then down again. Then, we finally knew it, we came around a bend and it was ALL UP HILL, over 500m of PUSH biking. It became a process of one bar to the next, just make the next bar, made it, ok, next bar.
It was now getting to about 4 o'clock and we just made it to the top of the mountain for a magnificent view. Awesome. Snow capped mountains to the north and the valley to the west. All the pain of the climb, the last 7 hours, was forgotten. Well, like child birth, almost forgotten.
Time to head down the mountain and what an amazing downhill. "Geeee Hiiii". Full speed ahead on a smooth fire trail that we just didn't want to end. Nearly 20 minutes of down, down, down, bends and speed and "Geehi" all the way. Actually had to stop a couple of times to rest on the downhill.
At the bottom of the hill was the ole' black fire trail which should make faster running back to Khancoban. Only 18ks down the road?? Computer say No! - a nice little sign at Geehi said 31 to go. A Police car stopped to check we're ok and confident as ever "Yeah, no worries, we've got torches". The police explained it was pretty much downhill from here, except, EXCEPT for an uphill to Scammells Lookout.
As night fell so did some of the crew. One at Bogong Creek, others on the hill up to Scammells Lookout, but fortunately Peter and JD had meet the Police again and JD hitched a ride back to Khancoban to collect the "Starship Voyager" to begin the "Scoop".
Scooping continued 'til about 8:30pm just past the Murray Power Station about 6ks from Khancoban. Only Peter made it all the way back to camp beating the Starship with a full crew by about 15 minutes. It was time for Bundy and Coke and Beer and dehy dinner and a well earned rest.
