Day 8
22 images Created 19 May 2019
We went to sleep to rain and woke to rain the next morning and after so much rain and cold we simply weren’t up to putting on wet cold gear to trudge, clamber and struggle up to the Labyrinth in the hope there would be some sort of views. So we dug in at the hut, in the hope the rain would clear by late morning and still give us time to make the trek.
We saw off the couple who we shared the hut with the previous night and whose packs had been given a thorough going over by the mice. They had variously chewed packs and bags, but did not seem to have done too much damage. Our packs and food, it seemed, were untouched. One small mercy perhaps.
Soon after a young chap on his own and a young couple arrived. The chap was planning to hike up to the Labyrinth and camp there overnight for a day or so to take photo’s and the couple were keen to get up to the Labyrinth. Despite no let-up in the rain and clearly low cloud, they headed up. As the rain eased just a little after lunch we did go for a walk back through the lovely faery forest we passed through coming in that held no interest for us at that time and thoroughly enjoyed the relaxed, warm, dry stroll through the lovely green forest. We did go a short way up the track toward the Acropolis to the Cephissus Falls and then called it a day as the rain came back in.
Sitting in the hut another lone walker arrived, an American who had walked in from Lake St Clair, so the hut would be quite busy for our last night. The very wet and disappointed couple returned a little later in the afternoon having made it to the Labyrinth but with very limited visibility the return on the effort was certainly questionable.
Darkness fell pretty early in the dark little hut, but the coal fire had kept us warm all day and we tucked into the last of our supplies, save for a final Clif bar and brekky for our last day on the track. Settling into our top platform beds we had warned the others of the mice and had taken all of the same precautions again to secure our gear. Others did the same, except the American. Turns out during the night the young chap fled his lower sleeping platform to the higher one as he could hear the mice running around him and he tied up nearly everything he had in places he thought the mice would not reach. But as it turned out they got into every pack (except ours) and demolished most of the food the careless American chap had failed to secure. Given how long these mice have been in the hut and problem they now pose and damage they do to gear, there must surely be some humane solution to dealing with them.
We saw off the couple who we shared the hut with the previous night and whose packs had been given a thorough going over by the mice. They had variously chewed packs and bags, but did not seem to have done too much damage. Our packs and food, it seemed, were untouched. One small mercy perhaps.
Soon after a young chap on his own and a young couple arrived. The chap was planning to hike up to the Labyrinth and camp there overnight for a day or so to take photo’s and the couple were keen to get up to the Labyrinth. Despite no let-up in the rain and clearly low cloud, they headed up. As the rain eased just a little after lunch we did go for a walk back through the lovely faery forest we passed through coming in that held no interest for us at that time and thoroughly enjoyed the relaxed, warm, dry stroll through the lovely green forest. We did go a short way up the track toward the Acropolis to the Cephissus Falls and then called it a day as the rain came back in.
Sitting in the hut another lone walker arrived, an American who had walked in from Lake St Clair, so the hut would be quite busy for our last night. The very wet and disappointed couple returned a little later in the afternoon having made it to the Labyrinth but with very limited visibility the return on the effort was certainly questionable.
Darkness fell pretty early in the dark little hut, but the coal fire had kept us warm all day and we tucked into the last of our supplies, save for a final Clif bar and brekky for our last day on the track. Settling into our top platform beds we had warned the others of the mice and had taken all of the same precautions again to secure our gear. Others did the same, except the American. Turns out during the night the young chap fled his lower sleeping platform to the higher one as he could hear the mice running around him and he tied up nearly everything he had in places he thought the mice would not reach. But as it turned out they got into every pack (except ours) and demolished most of the food the careless American chap had failed to secure. Given how long these mice have been in the hut and problem they now pose and damage they do to gear, there must surely be some humane solution to dealing with them.
