{"id":350,"date":"2013-01-21T05:25:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-20T21:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.joel.net.au\/?p=350"},"modified":"2026-07-01T20:43:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T12:43:29","slug":"my-disaster-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/2013\/01\/21\/my-disaster-day\/","title":{"rendered":"My Disaster Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, after three great straight days, I knew that at some point I would be back to encountering average days – but I was expecting to hit my worst day of the trip so far. Charged up from my previous day of mountain biking, my plan was to tackle another interesting-sounding ride over a few hours in the morning and then get on the road to visit Wilsons Promontory by the end of the day. My park pass was scheduled to expire at noon, so I had an early pancake breakfast (which had worked well the previous day) and headed out to Perisher Valley to try one of the mountain bike tracks they had listed in detail in a brochure. The trail wasn’t marked, but the turn-by-turn directions were written out in the brochure with a map.<\/p>\n

Well, I headed off to pursue the route, expecting to be back within a few hours. To make a long story short, I lost the trail about 2\/3 of the way in and tried to follow other hiking trails and signs of civilisation to get back. The terrain was extremely hilly, and I wasn’t keen to backtrack, which, in hindsight, would have been the best idea. Instead, I followed a hiking trail that brought me into a valley with a horse and a house. I thought both the horse and the house would have to be connected to a road or driveway that would get me back out to the main road I started on. Unfortunately, the trail dead-ended at the house, which was really just an emergency shelter for lost cross-country skiers in winter. The horse just seemed to be out there on its own, possibly wild – it was really out in the middle of nowhere. Other roads or trails I spotted couldn’t be found or weren’t really what I thought they were when I got there. <\/p>\n

I took stock of the situation by the time I reached the end of the hiking trail at the emergency shelter and knew that I had full phone coverage if I needed it, access to very clean river water that was probably suitable for drinking, my topographic GPS to guide me, and a stack of muesli bars to keep me fueled up. The route I was taking kept getting harder and harder, but I never wanted to go back through the hard part I just came out of. The only ways back to the main road seemed to be either to cross a sizable mountain or to follow a stream that led to it.<\/p>\n

Mountain Biking Bushwhacking<\/strong>
\n\r\n\t\t

\r\n\t\t\t
\r\n\t\t\t\t
<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t
© OpenStreetMap<\/a> contributors<\/span><\/div>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t<\/canvas>\r\n\t\t\t
<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t
<\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t