South Cape Track 2020 - Food Planning

Wednesday, 6 January 2021

Planning the food for such a long hike is hard work.  It wasn't quite as epic as when we did the overland track in 2015 and planned for 7 nights for 6 people. This time I planned breakfast, lunch and snacks for just the three of us while Clare planned for her and her dad. Paul and Rob plundered Clare's supplies once she dropped out as Rob was only roped into the whole thing on Christmas Day and Paul hadn't got around to doing anything yet.

For the main meals I did the planning for all 7 of us (before we became 5 of us) so I did a tonne of dehydrating of vegies and a curry in the week before we went.  I think I dehydrated 4 onions, 4 capsicums, 1 eggplant, 2 tins of kidney beans, 3 zuchinnis.  I used them for my marakesh curry and also to add a bit of volume to the other days. I also dehydrated the mushrooms that we forgot to eat on Christmas day.  We bought our Strive meals here

Anyway - for my own reference, this is what we took:

Breakfast

• Jett - Weetbix Crunch + Oats for Jett (175g x 5) 
• Jon & I - Porridge oats with extra nuts x 3 - 125g each serve
• Jon & I - Weetbix Crunch + Oats for the other 2 breakfasts

In hindsight I'd stick to porridge for every breakfast. It's nice and warm and lighter and less bulky than cereal. 

• 4 x (very thin) slices of salami per person each day
• 1 small bottle of chipotle sauce which was brilliant
• 1 packet alfalfa sprouts -these last really well and come self contained so they don't get squished and spoilt like salad leaves. They help to add volume to the wraps for the first 3 days at least.
• 1 capsicum which we had for the first 3 days which was nice
• 1 spanish onion which lasted the trip

 In one bag

1 x vegetable stock cube
1 Tbsp madras curry powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1/4 tsp turmeric
1 Tbsp raisins
1 Tbsp dried shredded coconut
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup coconut milk powder (available from indian food shops)
1/2 tsp dried garlic

In separate bag
Add dehydrated red kidney beans (400gms can). Other options include chickpeas or cannelloni beans.
Dehydrated vegetables – suggested options include eggplant, sweet potato, red capsicum,
carrots, zucchini

To assemble
Add boiling water to red kidney beans and vegetables and soak for 20-30mins
Add sufficient water to spices to create sauce and add to vegetables when rehydrated.
Bring to boil
Serve with rice or couscous.

South Cape Track - Day 5 - Are we there yet?

Saturday, 2 January 2021

If you didn't look too closely at the map, day 5 looked easy. Just 13 or so kms with a nice finish at South Cape Rivulet.  Unfortunately Paul had looked closely at the map and counted that we had nearly the same amount of climb to do as on the crossing of the Ironbounds.  Oh Dear.

We started off with a short and sharp 200m ascent of the ridge behind our campsite. A bit of a heart starter but we were at the top after about 20 sweaty minutes and had an easy descent to Granite Beach to follow.   

The tide was in, so after we stopped to collect water about 2/3 of the way down the beach, we had to walk on the huge round rocks the rest of the way, hoping a rogue wave didn't catch us.

Granite beach has a cool waterfall dropping over the cliffs to the rocky beach below:

But with the crashing waves we weren't too keen to hang around and admire it, so we followed our path up the rocks, passing the source of the falls on the way

We passed through the large and nice looking Granite Beach Campsite (where we would have camped if we were taking an extra day), then started on our second and highest climb of the day - another 470 metres up and over South Cape Range.  

Again it was steep and exhausting but we were making good progress until about a kilometre from the top, where we hit the mud. Endless, deep, energy sapping mud.  And it didn't stop at the top. 

I did notice the colour of the mud changed from time to time. From the peaty black mud, the to the clayish brown mud (which we had experienced a lot of on the Ironbounds descent), to the sandy coloured mud of actual streams. 

An hour later we'd made it a single kilometre further and we sat exhausted in a creek waiting for satan to come and greet us as we were clearly in hell.

It was around this point we asked each other how much we would need to be paid to turn around and walk the 5 days back to Melaleuca. The agreed fee was $20000 each, which, at this point, was quite reasonable.

Thankfully, just 10 minutes after this point we climbed up a little and out of the rainforest (which was actually really really pretty but hard to enjoy!) to a spot where we could stop for lunch without sinking into the depths of the quagmire.  We agreed that we would forego lunch on the final day (and cross our fingers that Clare would come in with food), so we could have extra rations and it was fantastic. Probably the only thing that gave us strength to complete the rest of that days hike!

It wasn't all peachy from there as we still had more climb and more mud to contend with, but we had some bursts of pleasure with as section of boardwalk through a flowery open section (see how happy I look),

and some descents which didn't involve mud.  The last ridge was a real killer, with our energy completely sapped we were down to resting about every 10 minutes.  Check out Rob's face:

It was hard to stop ourselves from grabbing the hikers we passed on their way IN and begging them not to go further! Instead we just wished them well and let them through - they had their own adventures to live!

..and then finally. FINALLY, we made it to South Cape Rivulet. Never had a rivulet looked so good.

We waded across the river, dumped our stuff, washed our gear,  and set up camp in the trees beside the rivulet.

Jett and Paul looking pleased with themselves as they have nabbed Jon and my chairs. 

Everything was so lovely and peaceful. 

It was so good to be done. Not just done for the day, but almost done for the hike. We had a peaceful evening with the last of the Strive dehydrated meals and dry 2 minute noodles. We were pretty much down to 1 breakfast and a few snacks left for the final day but nothing was going to stop us now. 

South Cape Track - Day 3 - The Ironbounds

Saturday, 2 January 2021

Day 3 started at 12:20am when Jon heard some suspicious rustling outside the tents. Luckily for the rest of us, he got up to investigate and discovered that what he first thought was a tassie devil, but turned out to be a quoll, was munching on one of our bags of snacks. This was odd, given all the food was packed away in tents for the night.  What was even odder was that our entire lunch bag, held in Jett's tent, was strewn about the campsite.  A bit more of a look around and the situation became clearer - the bastard quoll had sliced through the side of Jett's tent while he slept, dragged the lunch bag out through the hole, then proceeded to consume what it could. Luckily our cheese, salami and other lunch items were contained in hardier plastics than the zip-lock bags, so our only real loss was the damage to Jett's tent, and some nuts.  

Jon woke us all to let us know of the situation so we could defend our food for the rest of the night. Rob claimed he spent the rest of the night hugging his food to his body, while Jon and I made sure to pack all our remaining food into his pack which we put between us in our (luckily spacious) tent.  It looked like a disaster had been averted.

In the morning I got up to go to the toilet at 6.30, and I met Rob who was standing on the trail holding a packet of pasta in his hand and looking confused.  My first thought that he was still traumatised by the thought of losing his food so he was perhaps reluctant to let go of it, but then I realised that this looked a lot like Paul's emergency pasta packet and Rob had found it on the trail.

A quick scan of the area and I started to see more of Paul's food spread around the forest behind the tents, including his whole food bag and the very scarce remains of a 400g bag of nuts and m&ms (carefully prepared by Clare) and a few other emptied ziplock bags.  At about this time, Paul woke up and discovered the huge slash in the side of his tent.  He'd clearly slept through another raid (in all likelyhood this happened before Jett's).  All in all he lost most of his lunch stuff,  all his snacks & meusli bars and half his breakfast oats.  He was left with the single main meal he carried for all of us (phew), some of his back heat packs which I'd found in the forest,  half a packet of lunch wraps, and that emergency packet of pasta that Rob had found.  I think Paul hadn't really registered what had happened at midnight so he was completely shocked and outraged at this discovery in the morning.   Later we had visions of a quoll with such a distended stomach that it lounged around on Paul's heat packs recovering for the rest of the day.  After yesterdays rain soaking and tent incompetencies and today's food crisis we really were starting to feel like complete hiking chumps - which was a weird scenario given how much hiking experience we actually have between us.

Before we set off some other hikers who were on their second last day gave us some more porrige oats which was nice. Once Paul was placated,  and the tents were repaired with ankle strapping tape, we packed up and headed off.  We had the hardest day ahead of us - the crossing of the Ironbound ranges.

With 900 or so metres of climb in around 5km of hiking, it was a pretty steep ascent, but the track was good - there were lots of steps and it was generally dry. We took it steadily with a few rest breaks and we were pretty much up on the plateau after 3 hours. We'd heard many stories of huge winds forcing people to crawl the final 1.5k across the plateau before descending but we were pretty lucky with the weather, the clouds were low and while there were certainly strong gusts, they weren't enough to bother us really. It was cold at the top but we were prepared with all our warm and rain clothes handy.

It was nice to traverse the alpine plateau and have the ascent behind us, but we still had the descent - which was even more notorious.  It's hard to imagine how hard a 900m descent in about 7km could be but it really was a battle.  The track went straight down through muddy tree-rooty rain forest. Every step was hard and we had to climb over a million branches and tree roots, crawl under other branches, battle through the mud and often do all three things at once.  It was absolutely grueling and took us what seemed like hours.  When the track finally stopped going straight down and turned to skirt around the headland the going got even harder with steep muddy descents into gullies followed by equally steep muddy ascents.  With exhausted legs and minds this was a real test of resolve!  

After about 4 hours it finally got easier and the last km or so was easy.  We were delighted to arrive in Little Deadmans Bay after a solid 7 hours of walking. 

The campsite was really nice and we set about washing our gear and settling in for a well deserved rest. The sea was calm so Paul had a swim in the bay while the rest of us just washed our legs.

We had one of my prepared dinners for our evening meal - Marakesh Curry which was a big improvement on Day 1's attempt (although it was barely evening when we ate it but we were all exhausted and keen to get to bed immediately).  I'd say we were in bed well before 8. Just before we tucked ourselves in, the companion of a hiker from Port Douglas who was on her way back out (having walked all the way into Melaluca and beyond in the previous 10 days) arrived. He'd just walked 27kms for the day to catch up to her - all the way from our first night's camping spot. I said - 'gosh that's a big day' and he said 'not compared to the previous two'! It turned out he'd been doing some pretty serious bush bashing near Bathurst Harbour while his companion rested her blistered feet.   By this time we were also still together with LightPackers but the HeavyPackers and FamilyOfFive had diverted to a beach campsite the previous day. Anyway it turned out this guy had lost his phone during his adventures which included the number of the people he was staying with in Hobart.  He didn't know their surnames, or have a clue about their address so he was going to have to drive around looking for familiar land marks when he returned!  We quizzed him and decided that he was likely staying in South Hobart given his description of a chemist, IGA, and cricket ground cut into the side of a hill, but we couldn't help him more than that! They had massive plans to walk up Precipitous Bluff (almost as high as Mt Wellington) via a taped (but not tracked) trail, and that's after a 5km lagoon wade just to get to the bottom. After that they were going to traverse Moonlight Ridge (somewhere I'd never heard of) and pop out on the Cockle creek road with just a pleasant 20kms stroll back to their car.  Good Grief!  It was so nice to lie in bed and know that we had the Ironbounds behind us (and that we didn't have Precipitous Bluff ahead of us!).

Oh - and if you are wondering how Paul went without any lunch or snacks - we were able to re-ration our own supplies so it was easy enough to provide enough stuff for all of us. It's a good thing we weren't miserly with our provisioning. 

South Cape Track - Day 1 - Up and Away!

Friday, 1 January 2021