Trip Leader Info Weekend + Explore Walhalla to Otooles Camp Ground
This is our trip report written by Dave.
Well, home safe. Thanks Kevin for organising a great trip.
- Informative
- Great tracks
- Terrific people
- Perfect weather
I’ll try and give a bit of a trip report, and some of the other folk may wish to add to it.
In addition to some good driving the purpose of the trip was to allow Kelvin to provide some trip leading guidance so after an early meet up on Saturday morning, we drove through to Walhalla where we aired down and discussed some tips and tricks for running a successful trip - Tony prepared the homework and a very informative trip leaders guide which should ensure more cracking trips in the future. Very hand notes and of course Aaron kindly gave the first practical ‘trip leading lesson’ …what to do when someone is running late.
After Aaron (eventually) arrived we were off. Deep creek one – Well, the first part of the track is a corker which goes without saying, certainly unique in that there probably aren’t too many (legal) tracks in Vic where the track runs up the middle of the creek.
But the latter part of the track was where things got interesting. After a few of us made our way up the steep climb, Zak in his Disco (fire lookout station) had a few cracks at a clay ledge before sliding backwards, lifting his front wheel and coming within a bees pecker of rolling his truck. Quick as a flash Kelvin was on radio screaming for help to stop Zak’s Disco from going over. Everyone jumped to it and Aaron jumped to his camera, as we secured the Disco to a few trees before getting it back on all fours. Crisis averted.
A few of the other gents cruised up the track before Aaron also picked the questionable line sending the group into another winch running exercise. Clearly he must have forgotten to air down the new simex tyres but the main thing was the truck didn’t roll and there was plenty of recovery practice for everyone.
Some great tracks throughout the day (See Kelvin’s track list) one of which was particularly greasy and once again had us breaking out the winch. First, surprisingly for Julius in his big 4.8 GU and then, not as surprisingly, for Zak, who between his low range first and low range second, couldn’t quite get the Disco humming up the hill in low range 1.5.
We rocked into camp (little o’tooles) before the sun went down, got the fire blazing and set up the varying sleeping arrangements. We had the place to ourselves which was great although our neighbours in o’tooles made a fair bit of noise when they broke out the fireworks. At the same time Tony broke out the comedy, David fell asleep twice in front of the fire dreaming about his Jeep and Aaron came to grips with the shock of learning that not everyone in Ringwood knew who he was. A few more drinks around the fire and a couple of war stories and we called it a night.
Surprisingly it wasn’t too cold overnight and after packing up this morning we discussed a few recovery options and scenarios and recapped on what we could have done better the previous day. After a short morning circuit to wave goodbye to Aaron we headed up Williamson track to blow the cobwebs out of the trucks before coming back around to the bottom of Flat track.
Flat track is another must do track in the area. Some great driving before we pulled over to allow Tony and his lockers (Ktsss) to have a crack at the serious business towards the top of the track. It’s steep and there are some serious ledges on the intended section. After 3 valiant attempts Tony backed off before Kelvin picked a completely different line and nailed it, making I look too easy. Not to be outdone Julies lined up, and without lockers he followed suit and also nailed it. Rumour has it, after we all headed back to our cars to move on, David in his jeep thought it looked all too easy and without a navigator and with nobody watching also came up the most challenging section of the track without any problems.
Kelvin then led us towards dry gully track (and a couple of others that I can’t remember their names) which contained some pretty serious water crossing that came up above the door sills on most of the trucks.
After stopping for lunch, we finished up with deep creek 4 and deep creek 1 (both of which don’t contain a deep creek but contain some steep climbs) before driving back into Walhalla to air up.
So it was a great weekend all up. Yes, we may have almost lost Kelvin on the way home so our trip leader skills are still a bit rusty and yes, we are all pretty certain Tony won’t get a speeding ticket any time soon but everyone had a cracking weekend and Kelvin deserves some serious kudos for his efforts.
