Larapinta Trail – Day 4

By Stephen M on July 17, 2014

Date: Thursday 17/07/2014
Weather: Clear Blue Skies, 19C
Distance covered Approx. 13km
Start: Waterfall Gorge (Section 9 – Part 2)
Finish: Ormiston Gorge

Another crisp and sunny morning and with the added blessing of shedding over 2kg of weight from our packs! (due mainly from consuming over half of our water we had carried in the day before) We will be needing every advantage we can get as we’ll be facing some serious climbing soon into our walk today.

Sure enough, before we could even get into any rhythm, we were faced with a challenging ascent. It was easy to loose the actual track as it zig-zagged up the side of the range, whilst the markers where usually visible, it was never a straight line between! There were plenty of photo opportunities up this climb (read – rest spots)! When you thought you were close to the top and got over one ridge, you then saw more track winding it’s way up to yet another ridge. We spent over an hour climbing, but the view was worth it! 360 deg views with Mt Sonder now clearly visible.

We then followed the top of the “ridge back” for a number of kilometres before the decent back down the range. We were spurred on by the knowledge that we could be drinking a coffee later today if we make it to Ormiston Gorge before 4:00pm! The news received along the trail is that the Ormiston store has a flat pricing structure, basically everything is priced at $5. Ice creams – $5, Coffee – $5, Loaf of frozen sliced bread – $5, Bag of chips – $5 and so on! At least we won’t be weighed down with any loose change!

The good news is that we made it before the store closed. A cold can of coke and an ice cream won us over and the coffee could wait until the morning to help us on our way!

Our setup today included strategically placed rocks around our tent to stop the local Dingo’s from nosing their way in for a snack. We saw a few Dingo’s wandering around the area and were warned by the resident ranger that we needed to take care with our supplies and backpacks and to either store them in our tent or hang them from a tree or risk them being dragged off by the local wildlife! This would be our last camp meal as tomorrow we would be walking out to Glen Helen Resort to pickup our transfer back to Alice Springs!

Check out the photo gallery – Here!