We left the gravel track of Gnowellen Rd about on the Saturday afternoon at 1330hrs (1.30pm) 5 hours that afternoon/evening. Boundary fence firebreak to Arrows Firebreak (North Mirlpunda track), and then an extremely difficult ascent (especially with my 20kg pack), where I spent the final hour taking rest breaks about every 3-5 minutes, as my calves just kept fatiguing, and I kept getting too tired to go on...Near the top we couldnt see an easy way up, and were about to spend the night on a rock ledge when one of the guys spotted a small cave with a very tricky rock ledge access...So we just made it into a cave just below the summit of the First Arrow peak of the Mirlpunda Mountain. Reached there about 1830hrs (6.30pm) just as night was falling...Got out my Explorer sub zero sleeping bag (minus 5 degrees Celsius rating) and spent a scary,surreal, incredible night perched in this tiny cave about 800m above sea level with several hundred metres of cliffs below us...
Was scared I would slip over the edge, but still managed a good sleep despite turning over many,many times in the night. Cold winds from the Southern Ocean swirled round the mountain during the night, but my sleeping bag, and my very warm orange Adventureline beanie (my fiancee Kathryn and I bought some Adventureline beanies with a voucher from my sister Kristen from Ranger Camping earlier on in 2006) did the job... Being on the northern side of the mountain we did not get buffeted by the full force of the winds from the south side but could still hear them...About 4am I awoke on one of my many moments of turning to a different position, to see our cave had been entirely blanketed by clouds and all I could see was a thick blanket of fluffy white outside the cave and and the dark outlines of Dave and Nathan on either side of me pushed up against the back of the cave. About 0500 we visibility had improved a lot so we could see the valley streching below our "nest"...I saw an Eagle a few times cruising on the wind currents below us...
That day we hiked another 10 hours, starting with some rock scrambling up cliff ledges to get from our cave to the First Arrow summit. This is quite hard with a pack on as I had discovered the previous night up North Mirlpunda. We took a few breaks along the way for various reasons.....We visited the Third Arrow cave which was quite Palatial by comparison to our little nook in the side of the mountain the previous night, found one of the few water sources on this hike, and Nathan spent best part of an hour running back to find my commando jacket which I had dropped (it was tied around my waist but I did not notice it fall off)...We traversed around the heavily vegetated cliffs of Pyongoorup Peak (1060m-2nd highest peak in Stirling Ranges), and then summited this massive buttress of a peak...We took a few moments to admire the incredible majestic rugged beauty in all directions from Pyongoorup....We continued our hike along this narrow ridgetop from Mountain to Mountain arriving at Ellen Peak next where I encountered a small greenish dugite? snake blocking my way in a heavily vegetated area...
After avoiding mr snake I caught up with Nathan and Dave as we summited the 1012m Ellen Peak which is the 5th highest peak in the Stirling Ranges and the lowest of the peaks above 1000m...Wrote in the diary/notebook on the summit there...Then we missed a gully turn off and spent some time trying to descend the northern cliffs of Ellen peak scrambling down rock ledges with packs on was very hairy experience and for the second time that weekend I hoped we would avoid serious injury or death...Eventually Nathans attempt to pathfinder his way back to the gully was aborted especially with the howling strong southerly winds buffeting the cliff on the south side...Dave decided we would retrace our steps so we ascended up the rock ledges not spending too much time looking at the yawning chasm of a valley below, but shaking with the nervousness of trying to make it up to the next rock ledge handhold above without losing our grip or our nerve...Rockclimbing cliffs without ropes and with hiking packs on is not my recipe for success...kids do not try this one at home...:-)
Eventually we came back to the hidden gully and commenced the descent which consisted of sliding down near vertical dirt slippery slopes grabbing on to small shrubs and rock handholds to keep the giant 50-100m slide from being too fast a descent...During this time I was carrying Daves pack which was a lot lighter and I lost his bedroll without realising it so Dave had to ascend the 100m or so to find it...Then it was rock scrambling again, and a long downward hike for an hour or two with the Quadriceps getting a workout this time until reached the plains below Ellen Peak, where I got my pack back and increased the pace until we reached the boundary fence firebreak...where we drank our remaining fluids and my barleysugar stash started to run low after 8 hours of that...
The final hike to Gnowellen Rd was a very tough one for me as I was so tired by then...An Epic 10 hour hike following on from the tough 5 hours the previous night and we were ready to drive the gravel tracks and roads back and finally rest our weary bodies...What a hike!