First day of a pretty incredible weekend fastpacking in Deua NP, a couple of hours SE of Canberra. Was our fourth choice for the weekend and very last minute planning with the rain scrapping our Barrington Tops plans, then snow vetoing Kosciuszko & Jagungal options. I wasn't particularly enthused by this one as I knew it would be rough and potentially not much running, but it turned out that the scenery and challenge more than made up for it, with some of days 2 & 3 going a bit beyond comfort zone in a few places. The whole weekend felt like an adventure race mixed with
Barkley Marathons, and being somewhere with nobody else seen for days was pretty cool.
Started with a big descent and then a big climb on firetrail for 5km before finding & turning off for a rough, vague "horse trail" heading south. Lost it pretty quickly going down to a couple of creeks then bush bashed up to refind it again, the main indicators being chopped logs and a bit of a trod through ferns. Once on the spur the forest opened up to provide beautiful running down a broad spur, still with no real trail to follow but instead notches cut from trees every so often to keep you on the right track (crazy Barkley reminder 1).
Once at the bottom of the spur we had to contour a hillside, cross a creek, then follow it along to our evening campsite in a nice clearing near the river, all of which was rather rubbish bush bushing with lots of stabby things, but we made it with enough time to gather firewood & water & setup camp for the night.