Last day to Harrietville, and what a weird day it was!

Not early enough, it turned out! It was dark as we prepared, and there was no time for a leisurely breakfast.

We ended up leaving 10 minutes late which turned out to be fatal. But having no crystal ball with us (too much weight) we set off with high hopes and low gear. Lit up in the dense fog we trundled across the landscape at our usual speed. My mind was busy with calculations. I reckoned we needed to average 11km per hour, which might be do-able if the downhill section made up for our slow pace. The temperature was 1 degree but there was a wind, and near the summit of Hotham it started raining. The downhill was scary. The fog was so thick we couldn't see the road surface well, or what was ahead, so we couldn't go fast. Add to this our weight and wet brakes which meant we weren't able to stop fast.

I just have to digress here to say how strange life is. If someone had asked me how I was going to spend the day, not in a fit of madness would I have thought of "oh, we're going to spend 6 hours lying underneath a house", but that's what we did! Read on.....

At the summit at 8:05 I realised we wouldn't make it so I went ahead to get to the gate in time. Maybe I could talk the guy into letting the others pass since I was on time. No sir! I was there by 8:29 and he informed me that he got into trouble for letting a cyclist through last week. The cyclist was sent back up the hill by the tree-fellers (or maybe there were four....that's an Irish joke!)

We understood the reasons for the strict enforcement, but we were devastated. Would we ride back up the miserable hill in miserable weather? (an option quickly discounted). Would we wait eight hours at the barrier? (Not possible- we'd get hypothermia). Mr Stop Sign from Omeo suggested we walk the alternative route.. A 4wd track to Harrietville over Mt Sugarloaf. This looked like an 8 hour trek, but we would definitely be warm and this was a priority. The other option was to sit "on the balcony" of the ticket office just down the hill where the 4wd track took off. Mr Ssfo told us with conviction that it would provide us with shelter so we headed down to investigate.

Here's the balcony. 

The hut was closed and monitored by a security camera- no chance of me using my skills here! We were all freezing and Belinda was shivering. We couldn't stay here so we rugged up and started along the 4wd track. Actually "along" isn't the right word. The gradient was one I've only seen tackled by F1-11s at the air show. Belinda was struggling and after taking two of her panniers, I was too. 

After about 200m sanity prevailed. We had to return to a (locked) hut we had discovered near the ticket office and find or make shelter.

But we were warm: pushing heavy bikes uphill had got our blood circulating. We thought it would be good to keep doing the hill sans bike, so we ditched them and slowly climbed to the top of Mt Sugarloaf, surveying the devastation from the recent fires.

Returning to the hut, Belinda found an access door under the house...Shelter.

I set about making us a platform/bed. This was going to be our home for 6 hours so it needed to be comfortable. 

Raw materials for the bed

With foundations, cross beams and a sheet of plywood badly damaged by being run over by Caterpillars ( the big ones), we had a platform, and some carpet stored under the house completed our luxurious accomodation. 

It was cold. We had to do the occasional constitutional walk up the hill to regain temperature. Snoozing lightly, shivering, we whiled away the hours. Counting down to 4:30. It couldn't come quick enough! Dismantling the bed would take a while, and get us a bit warm prior to the whoosh down. It was still foggy and now raining.

Quite cold now, we dismantled our bed, restored the hut and put on all of our warm gear. Soon we were hurtling down the road in thick fog. There were two one-lane sections, the second at a huge landslide, just above Harrietville. This meant waiting with cars and setting off together. We were only just slower than cars, it being pretty poor visibility. At one stage it rained consistently, but we were pretty warm in good gear and we gained confidence and speed. I enjoyed letting cars overtake, then catching up with them and tailgating (from a safe distance) 

A massive land slip under repair above Harrietville

By 5:40, and just before darkness set in we reached Belinda's and the trip was complete...

.....km in all ( I haven't added it up yet) 9 days, lots of pedal revolutions! What an adventure!