June 17th 2021

Days km: 31.6km
Total km: 190.4km

The track from White Horse Hills to Mt Wells had been pretty badly burned earlier in the year by a controlled burn that looks like they lost control over. It was eerie to walk through, especially in the misty, early morning.

Not far from the hut there is a small, steep climb but the reward was walking across a lot of cool boulders, a small pool at the top of the rocks with some nice misty views and, most importantly, phone reception.

From there the trail descended for a while before starting the long winding ascent to Mt Wells. I bumped into another couple of Northbounders and they assured me the climb wasn’t as tough as it looked. “Just wait to you are near Pemberton, they are pretty tough climbs!” Oh good, something to look forward to…. the ascent was long but it was nowhere near as bad as it looked in the Guthooks profile. I mean the last section was steep, but it was only a short distance.

I lunched at Mt Wells shelter, the only fully enclosed shelter on the trail, and then headed on to Chadoora. It was pretty much all downhill, which was nice, and after the Mt Wells summit I finally started seeing some not burnt-to-cinders bush. Seriously, it was depressing walking through endless kilometres of the fire damaged section.

I reached Chadoora shelter before the 5pm and made an attempt to get a fire started, but everything was damp. It got pretty damn cold when the sunset and with no fire my only option to keep warm was to crawl into bed. In saying that I was plenty tired after a big day so sleep was not going to be an issue.

I am very much looking forward to hitting town tomorrow. I need a shower…badly. I have gone so long without one that I can’t even smell myself anymore. And just a few days ago I had smelt unbearably bad…