Wow.
The Larapinta Trail stretches from the Telegraph Station a bit north of Alice Springs 233km to the west, meandering its way through the West MacDonnell National Park and culminating on Mt. Sonder. It took me 21 days to do it. This is fairly slow, compared to other people who walk it in less than half the time... but I had never done any big overnight hikes in my life before, and also wasn't super fit. The goal was to make it at all. I reached, crossed and extended my physical limits, and finished in the end with iron legs, thinking: This is best thing I've ever done.
And as I walked I realized: turning a hike through such natural beauty and breathtaking country into a race seems quite silly to me.
You got to take it slow and take your time to feast your eyes on the intense shades of reds in the sand, the greens of the flora, the rainbow swirls in the rocks, the vastness of the plains, the play of the light on the mountaintops at dusk or dawn!
You got to take breaks in shady gorges an dip your sore feet into the icy cool waterholes, while listening to the zebra finches' chatter and sneakily watch them bathe in a pool surrounded by reeds.
You got to shrug off your backpack on a high peak that you just climbed and sit for two hours, enjoying the amazing views all around you and the warm wind on your face.
You got to walk off the track and up that rocky riverbed that will lead you to another chasm in between to mountains where the blazing sun hadly gets to and the coolness of the air brings welcome relief to your sunburned skin.
You got to make camp on a high hilltop and watch the billions of bright starts in the milky way above your head, and count the shooting stars until you fall asleep.
You got to find a shady grove in a dry riverbed in the heat of the day and go for a nap in the warm sand, hidden by overgrowing trees and the old sticks and leaves that got stuck between them last time the river flowed.
The Larapinta Trail is divided in 12 sections of varying length and difficulty of terrain, so people can either choose to only walk one or a couple of sections of the trail, or the whole length of it. On each trailhead is a watertank, sometimes even in the middle of a section, so it is ensured that trail walkers never have to carry more than two day's water. At three trailheads walkers have the opportunity to drop off rations of food and store it there, so they don't have to carry all the food from the start on.
This service with the watertanks and the food drops, all arranged and maintained by the National Park Rangers, was the reason why I was able to walk the Trail. NEVER could I have carried more food and water than I already did. When my Rainbow friend Jelmer first told me about the Trail, the thought of ME being able to complete such a challenge would never have crossed my mind. Yet, listening to his stories and encouragement, it seemed very possible that I could. Why not? Of course I can do it. Confidence, Pony!
So with full confidence I dropped of my food rations, packed my backpack, bought a map and left my car with an awesome fellow I found on Couchsurfing, Peter. Section 1 and 2 were rated as "medium" difficulty, each taking two days to comfortably make your way over long but mostly flat distances.
As July/ August is winter in the desert, it's the only time of the year when the temperatures are actually bushwalker-friendly, and so it was quite busy on the Trail. Almost every day I met several single walkers or groups, and although we were strangers, just the fact that we were all taking on the challenge and wonders of the Trail connected and made some sort of unifying feeling coming up whenever I met other walkers. I never felt lonely, I knew there were always people behind and ahead of me on the Trail, and we would walk alone during the day, but meet on waterholes or at campsites.
Soon enough, during section 3 that was rated as "hard", I started to doubt my confidence. My backpack was so frickin' heavy (I don't know how much, I didn't have a scale), my feet and my back started to get really sore, my 20 Dollar Coles sleeping mattress was super bulky and my cheapy sleepingbag was bulky AND didn't keep me warm enough in the freezing desert nights. I wrapped myself in plastic bags and an emergency blanket from the First Aid Kit to keep the minus degrees away from my body. My shoes are awesome, but don't have any ankle support, and the Trail led me over rocky riverbeds and up and down steep slopes on loose, sharp gravel - real ankleturner terrain. Knowing how it is to be injured when you're travelling, I walked ridiculously slow and carefully like a grandma.
And... there are women in their mid sixties I met, as well as a family with three kids of under 10, and they all walked the Trail a lot faster than me! Duuuh..... :D
For geologists, the Larapinta Trail must be like paradise. I have never seen such amazing colours in rocks before! All shades of red, grey and black, brown, ochre, white, yellow, all mixed up and forming the most amazing patterns and magic marble surfaces. Rocks in all colours of the rainbow.
In Standley Chasm I had a rest day, making friends with the Irish people living and working there and having a most awesome campfire night with lots of jamming and yarning. Wow, what an unexpected heap of awesomeness on that day!
After Standley Chasm the Trail led me up to Brinkley Bluff, where I watched the sunset and spent the night, to walk down to Birthday Waterhole on the next day. This section 4 was rated as "very hard", and they meant very hard! At this point I could feel my body running out of energy - I binged what felt like kilograms of food and slept for maybe 14 hours, and it was still not enough to fill up my energy reserves. Section 5 then felt even harder, climbing up rocky riverbeds that narrowed into even rockier, steeper gorges - it was like rock climbing with backpack on at some stages, the "path" only marked by occasional arrows on a tree or a rock. My left achilles tendon started to hurt pretty badly - I probably overstretched it on the steep slopes. Exhausted past the limit and slightly limping I seriously started to doubt my sanity for undertaking this walk. What had made me think that I could do this?! But despite all struggle, look at the photos and you'll see how very rewarding it was.
Up, up, up the steep mountainside, and then down into the valley along a ridge called "Razorback Ridge" - one can imagine where that name originated from!
But at this point I arguably had the most magic moment of the whole Trail. I walked along the narrow, rugged spine of the ridge and the sun set right in front of me, leaving behind a spectacle of colour in the sky, from orange to red and yellow to purple and blue, illuminating the dark silhouettes of the mountains and venus already twinkling in the midst of all rainbow colours.
Behind me tough, a big, brightly white glowing ball rose above the mountain range I had stood on earlier that day - the full moon. It was even, as I later found out, what is called a blue moon - when it is the second full moon in the same month. This obviously happens only rarely - hence the saying - once in a blue moon!
Past the crystal clear refreshing waters in Hugh Gorge I went out onto the flatlands and left the Chewings Range behind. Crossing the Alice valley in a two-day walk, I reached Ellery Creek Big Hole in the Heavitree Range.
There, interestingly, it soon caught my attention that the rock had changed. Instead of the colourful quarzite slabs of the Chewings Range there was greyish-white smooth Dolomite, that is almost like concrete. In between it and enclosed in it and mixed with it is iron, pure iron that is rusty and forms the most amazing colourful rocks and when you step on the loose pieces of it sounds like in a smithy.
From Ellery Creek I hitched a ride into Alice Springs and bought a little fleece blanket to keep me warm in the cold nights. Also some fresh food and chocolate, yes! And then hitch hiked back to Ellery Creek to complete the Trail.
I had a few encounters with animals, thank God no snakes, but countless little desert dragons, and little birds like honey eaters, zebra finches and little martins flying crazy maneuvers on the mountainsides.
Also there are feral cows and wild buffaloes around - they get HUGE! I found a skeleton of a buffalo that must have been shot - the bullet hole in the gigantic skull is clearly visible.
A black-footed Rock-Wallaby having a sleeping wash up on the lookout over Serpentine Gorge.
Beautiful spinifex pigeons. There were also a bunch of herons catching fish in Ormiston Waterhole.
Bob and Nell are an awesome couple, totally into hiking and birdwatching, and I met them some 5 times along the Trail.
Ormiston Gorge - wow wow wow. It's almost past capacity of understanding how old all this is. How long it must have taken until all those hard, very hard quarzite and marble rocks down in the gorge got such smooth, soft edges? When the water only flows every couple of years for a short period?
Mt Sonder, the destination, showing up on the horizon during section 9. The last night before I climbed its summit I camped on a hill close to it along section 11, and in the glow of the rising sun the mountain looks just like a sleeping dragon. Can you see its tail on the left, its folded wings forming the peaks and its head resting to the right?
Victory! Euphoria and ecstasy dances on the top of Mt Sonder.
