Wel well, the delp decided to do a burn, which was on all the tracks we were doing, thankfully it rained like buggery and they put the burn back four days. Fantastic I thought, but then the tracks would be wet.... bugger, but at least no dust.
We met up at grant, the drive there was wet, big Kev camped there a day early and said it rained all night, I thought hmmm that's not good.
Due to the uncertainty of track access Brennan decided to pull out, thanks for letting me know (via phone) mate.
In the morning our plan was to do blue rag, but it was still 100% cloud cover which was flowing through the camp site, and light rain on and off. We had a chat about it and decided that if we couldn't see anything there was little point going, as Garry wanted to do some photography.
So we went onto do the crooked river and billy goats.
Crooked crossings were all nice and easy, Kev hadn't seen them before so he enjoyed it, and I'm sure Garry did also, they were double the height they were the previous time I saw them but still no problem at all.
Then came billy goats, the climb upto the heli pad was piss easy, and we thought well this is a walk in the park.
Then the drop down from the helipad was easy too, but half way up the hill there was a chopped up section that was full of wet clay like mud, we heard on the radio another group had trouble on the way up also. Gazz got through no worries but the rangers needed to winch on a section which was lifting wheels, only 5 feet or so but just enough of a bugger to need a winch, we could have done track building, but we didn't want to spend a lot of time there and possibly hold anyone else up, as it's not wide enough to pass, so the easy option was the winch, after that section we were all fine, a few rough bits which bounce the front up, but not too bad, always better in hind sight though.
From there we made our way to horse yard camp ground for the night. We were planning to do some tracks toward Licola for the next day.
Unfortunately Big Kev wasn't feeling well, he wanted to soldier on but we talked him out of it and headed back on the Friday.
So all in all it was a fantastic trip, we still didn't get to do blue rag, that was the second time for me it didn't work out and for Garry I think a few as well. Not everything went to plan, but I reckon we were all glad we went on the trip.
AND a bloody big thanks to Garry for setting up the winches for both Kev and myself, seeing you climb up slipping in the mud dragging all that heavy cable made me feel bad, much appreciated mate.
Big Kev I hope you are feeling better mate.