To start our final year on the trail we had an easy one-day walk – a catch-up for the postponed last walk in 2014. Our numbers had reduced due to a couple of our walkers suffering injuries in the ‘off’ season. So it was down to The Woods of Mount Crawford with a random assortment of teddy bears and a screaming baboon called Super Morris Major!!!
… and on that understanding I became part of a 4-man crew that met at Cobblers Creek at 8:30am on […]
The origin of the Pathfinders Walking Program and its connection to The Friends.
Saturday night, about ten years ago and all is well and peaceful at the Edwards household. The phone rang, “it’s George here. I think I have sussed out a walking route from Seacliffe to Mount Lofty without very much road walking. Would you and Marlene like to do a reccy with me tomorrow?”
As we are all so aware of at the moment, water is a precious commodity. So it’s with some note that a recent project to install a water tank on the slopes of Mt Brown was undertaken collaboratively by several parties.
The catch-up chatting began in the bus, which picked up many walkers from outside the Heysen office, in Pitt Street, on the way to the first stop in Port Augusta. Walking gear and food filled the storage area under the bus but left just enough space for a large addition, no names mentioned, in Snowtown.
The ‘Heysen Trail’ has become our obsession and biggest personal challenge to complete in August 2008. When we first started walking on some End-to-End 1 days and catch ups we thought, okay just for the fun of it, we will do the odd day. We were told that we should just do the easy bits but this made us determined to tackle the whole 1200km!
I joined the Friends of the Heysen 20 years ago, and from the start was interested in trail maintenance. I could not at that time take on a maintenance section due to business commitments, so volunteered to work on an ad hoc basis, notably when there was a full time FoHT Manager, who would telephone for volunteers.
End-to-End 3 crossed the final stile at Parachilna on Saturday the 13th, for the largest finishing celebration in the Friend’s history. Eighty three walkers climbed the wooden steps. Fifty four were completing the trail and of that group forty three had started the journey together at Cape Jervis, six years earlier.
GPS units have become quite affordable over the past few years. They can be a useful tool for hiking, but they can also be a little overwhelming. What are they useful for? Can they be useful along the Heysen Trail?