Not the Larapinta Stage Race - Day 3

Monday, 20 August 2018

Today we really needed the 4wd..

Not because we got lost but because we had a clever plan. More on that later.. 

Because I still have a cold, and because we were both tired from yesterday, we slept in and took it pretty easy today (well, relatively speaking - Jon still managed to run for 90 minutes and I hiked a good 7.5km).  We decided to stray from the Larapinta area in the West MacDonnell Ranges and go out the other side of town to the East Larapinta Ranges. They were just as spectacular.  

We started with visits to a couple of gorges in Yeperenya Nature Reserve. These were very short walks but there was some cool rock art (that we weren't allowed to take photos of), and both the gorges were beautiful.  Often there is water in the waterholes but today there wasn't.

Then we drove onwards to Trephine Gorge Nature Park - about 80ks east of Alice Springs.  At one end of the park we did the Panorama walk, then we did the Gorge Walk.  Both were lovely.

Then I said goodbye to Jon and he set off on the one-way 9km Ridge Top Trail..

..while I drove down to the other end of the park which is where the 4wd was required for the last 4kms. It was a public road, just a very very hairy one! I've never had to negotiate lumps and bumps and ditches and rocks like that before - but the Ford Trailblazer did just fine. The most nerve wracking part was what to do if I encountered another car but luckily I didn't, even though there were plenty of people in the car park when I finally arrived! 

While Jon ran, I walked the Chain of Ponds walk, which again was absolutely lovely (but hard to capture with the deep shadows and for some reason I didn't think to pack a proper camera!).

While I was doing that, Jon was doing this..

It looks like that ridge top track went up very high indeed!

 With some amazing timing I reached the trail junction just as Jon arrived..

Then I let Jon experience the fun of driving the car back out again..

Once on our way home we made a final stop at Corroboree Rock to finish our lunch that we had started about 3 hours earlier!

It was a great day and once again the scenery was amazing.  It's going to get down to 0 tonight so it will be a cold start for us tomorrow. We're planning to head to Standley Chasm for another stretch of the Larapinta Trail.