night hike aka disaster hike

Last night was a night hike that I organised in Morialta Conservation Park. Some may have called it a disaster hike, I myself call it a delve into unknown territory. Click on the icon to bring up a map of where I intended we go (green line) VS where we actually went (red line).

The SMS I invited people with went something like this:

NIGHTHIKE 2NITE: 8pm, end of Cortlyne Rd, Ross Trevor. Easy walk along Fox Hill firetrail (3.5km) to Norton Summit pub

What the SMS should have said was:

NIGHTHIKE 2NITE: 8pm, end of Cortlyne Rd, Ross Trevor. Extremely steep inclines along some random firetrail (5km) to some random place. Be ready to be punished.

The reason for this, was because:

1. I left my torches at home (although I sped back to Paul’s house to borrow one – however it wasn’t too bad without them because although it was only about a 20% moon, the clouds in the sky did well at reflecting the city lights. There wasn’t really any time which required a torch).
2. I left the map at home.
3. I had never actually been anywhere near this firetrail before.

In total, 9 people rocked up including myself. Referring to the map above, it was bad because I thought that even though I left my map at home we would be okay, becuase we could just use the boundary of Morialta Conservation Park as guiderails to the top right corner. This then would lead to Norton Summit Rd, which is of course where the target of the mission was, the Norton Summit Hotel – aka beer and good times!

It went horribly wrong as you’ll see on the map, where the road (red line = bad) went straight up, and because it was dark we didn’t see the turn off to stay within Morialta Conservation Park. We ended up going I believe 1 to 1.5 times the width of the map up the road, hence doubling the distance to the pub. We never actually made it either. Ben Perry did nearly get killed by a speeding ute doing rally driving along Moores Road. He evaded being hit at 100km/h by a mere 20cm – he thought the lights behind him were our torches, which was a near fatal mistake.

Despite a late start (8:45pm instead of 8pm) due to some late comers that never ended up coming, and the extra several kilometres of extra steep inclines I subjected the 8 people to, I did manage to get them back to their cars by 11:57pm, the same day we left!

All in all, everyone seemed to enjoy the night (or at least they were good liars) and I’m already planning the next one – on a full moon, and a National Park that I know like the back of my hand (Cleland). Stay tuned! Please leave a comment below this post for an expression of interest of the next hike.