All or Nothing

it was an all or nothing weekend.
i had committed to doing a scenic rim 100 mile course recce this weekend before alpine had been postponed a week and before my knee was niggly.
the proposed course takes in some of the nicer parts of lamington and springbrook national parks near and on the qld/nsw border.
with a narky itb i was a bit worried about making it thru but it held up really well in extremely difficult terrain.

tamsin, tanky, greg and i started at o'reillys at 6.30am on friday.
our plan was to make it to echo point and dump tents/night gear then make it as far out west along the border as possible.
although we were hoping to make it to the stinsons wreck site or even christmas creek road (where the race would go) it was very apparent early on that that would be impossible unless we wanted to be out past midnight.
the short version is it took us 11.5hrs for the out N back from echo pt to pt lookout which was at a guess 23-24km.
yep thats 2km/hr.

lots of tree roots, slippery rocks, steep up and downhills.
very thick bush by trailrunning standards with lots to go over or under or thru.
the sign at echo pt said people should bring a machette and they werent joking.
the prickle bush was a special fav for us all and tanky and i got 'stuck' numerous times.
it made the terrain at cradle look like a fricking athletic track.
the knee started to niggle soon after we turned around so i nursed it in using poles as a crutch.
seemed to pull up well today for the 2 hr hike back to oreillys.
all up we hiked for 15hrs on the friday.
tried out some of the light weight fastpacking gear and it seemed to work well.
the other 3 carried normal hiking packs and i (according to tanky) carried a 'school bag'.
i took that as a compliment
a great training weekend.
needless to say i gather the proposed route will be changed.

photos (not very in focus!) are of scratches on my left leg and right elbow

alpine 100 in 2 weeks.
the sleepless nights continue.