2 posts from December 2007

I was feeling a little bit grumbly as I started, but once I made it to the start of the actual walking track, my mood started to improve. It was a good day for a walk - more like a nice Spring day than early Summer. There was a refreshing breeze. Once I got further in and started walking along a little creek, I was really glad to how much more water there was around. Rather than being a sad elongated puddle, there was actually water in the creek, gurgling quite pleasantly. The moss and ferns in the area looked a lot happier, although I noticed that the recent unsettled weather had had other affects on the area - a lot of trees had been knocked over and this led to some fairly tricky scrambles over the fallen trees.

Soon enough time had passed that had I turned back, I would have definitely missed the real estate agent and prospective buyer. But I had just passed Clarinda Falls, which actually seemed like a real waterfall today and not a pathetic trickle over a cliff. I wanted to go further in. Because of the recent switch to daylight savings, I could walk for at least another ninety minutes before the sunset, and then there'd be some twilight before it got really dark.

Soon I was deep in Sassafras Gully, which is a rugged twisting valley. The floor of the gully is broad, and is a mess of hillocks and ridges, rainforest and creeks and ponds. I was thinking of this one lovely waterhole which was possibly half an hour away, which would be a good place to turn around. I heard a strange sound, could it have been somebody yelling or a crow or lyrebird? I stopped, waiting to hear if the noise repeated. Within a minute it did, it was definitely a person, but I couldn't understand what was being said. It repeated again, I decided to call out, "Hello?" Most of the time I am soft spoken, but my voice can be very loud when it needs to be. There was an immediate response - I thought I caught the word "lost" in there. I now had an idea where this person was, towards the top of a ridge off the track on my right. I wasn't going to be able to have any sort of conversation like this. I decided to leave the track so I could climb the ridge a little to see what was happening.

I did not do this lightly - when I walk, I never stray far from the track. Especially in a place like the Blue Mountains, where the twisting valleys and creeks make it really easy to lose one's sense of direction. I have heard more than one horror story of experienced walkers losing their way, and still being lost at nightfall. There are so many cliffs and ridges in the area, the Blue Mountains is definitely not a good place to be at night.

It was not easy going to reach halfway up the ridge where the voice came from, the vegetation was very thick and treacherous to walk on. But I made it and yelled out again, I could see a young man wave at me from the top of the ridge. He said that he'd been lost for seven hours and asked if I knew where the track was. I told him that it was 200 metres down the slope, and that I could show it to him.

So that's how I met Josh. He had started walking at 9 am, and had been planning on just walking for an hour. He hadn't even had breakfast, he had planned to get that in Springwood after this walk. But he left the track to get a different view of Clarinda Falls, and then got disoriented and then completely lost. At some point the panic must have set in and then he wouldn't have noticed the track even if he'd stumbled upon it. He had exhausted himself from seven hours of scrub bashing, and of course he didn't have any food or drink with him. Oh, and he hadn't told anyone where he'd gone. Josh had broken just about every single rule of safe bushwalking. I wasn't going to judge him too harshly, because I break a couple regularly - such as not walking alone - but I try to keep the most important ones.

I guided him back to the track. Early on, I still felt a little leery of this stranger, but he seemed genuine and as somebody said to me later, "muggers are lazy and are not likely to walk for two hours to a ridge in the middle of nowhere to find somebody." I could see how exhausted he was and there was no way that I could just leave him on the track to make his own way home. He wouldn't make it before nightfall and he'd get lost again. Luckily he was just exhausted and dehydrated and hadn't been injured. He was still able to walk, albeit slowly and with frequent rests.

On the way back, we came to a creek. Ordinarily I would be quite entranced, it was a lovely spot in the filtered late afternoon sun. Today it was a good place for Josh to have a drink. I've been warned off drinking from Blue Mountains creeks. Because all the population of the Blue Mountains is on the ridge top, it is not recommended to drink from the creeks in the valleys because run off from the developed areas. I mentioned this, but Josh decided to take this chances because he felt so dehhydrated.

I had a real effort to engage him in conversation during the long and slow walk out of Sassafras Gully, hoping to calm him down and distract him from his exhaustion. I found that we had a few things in common with me. He was new to Sydney, was originally from Hamilton in New Zealand but had spent a number of years living in Perth. He worked in IT and lived in Penrith, but was thinking of buying a place in Springwood. He was really into lawn bowls, and reckoned that I should think about getting involved in the Springwood bowls club.

Towards the end of the track, during one of the final really steep sections, Josh didn't think he could go any further. I told him to sit down, while I got some refreshments from the nearby petrol station - which was only 5 minutes walk away (for me). That did the trick. He made it to his car, sat down, paid me back for what I bought and we parted.

I don't know what would have happened to Josh if I hadn't been there to help him out. On the walk back, at one point we came across a place which he thought he'd been to several times while lost, yet it was on the track! I think that in his in panicked mental state, he would have almost zero chance of finding his way out before dark. So it's quite possible that I saved this person's life - or saved him from injury. It made me feel good about myself.