Booroong'pah (Flinders Peak) summit

I needed a day off. It’s been a big week: I completed my PhD, had a cultural fit interview with Vygo (a job I really wanted) and got rejected by them the next day, all within the space of a few days. I needed a break from work things: thinking about finding a new job, applying for positions, thinking about careers paths, updating fucking LinkedIn. So I asked Nat and Kirsty if they fancied coming for a hike up Booroong’pah (Flinders Peak), it’s not that far to drive and it’s a relatively short hike so it didn’t need to be a mission that would take up a whole day. Nat was unfortunately sick but Kirsty was keen provided she could get back for work at 2pm. Sweet! So we agreed to meet at 8:30am at the trailhead.

I made a mate for the drive and sent Kirsty a message as I left the house, to which I got a reply saying she’d actually left already cos she wanted to spend some time sitting in nature before the hike. So I was a little confused when I arrived and she wasn’t there. The start of the trailhead is out of range (for the Vodafone network at least) but I checked my phone and she had messaged talking about leaving her bank card at home but then also saying she was back on the road again. So I wasn’t worried about her not turning up. And so she did only about 5 minutes later. That was enough time for me to realise I’d made one of the most amateur errors in the hiking world: didn’t bring water! Kinda. I had a thermos that was still mostly full of water that I’d heated for the mate, but I’d forgot to bring the other thermo full of room-temperature water for the actual hike. So I did have water, but it was very hot!

Kirsty turned up and had a tale of her own about an absolute amateur and leaving her bank card at home. She’d gone to Maccas for a coffee and realised she’d left her card at home and doesn’t keep anay cash in the car. So she sheepishly drove off but downloaded a virtual wallet app on her phone to pay for fuel. Assuming the app was gonna work fine she then filled up at the station and went to pay but could not get the app to work. Eventually she had to pay by bank transfer. Lucky for me she was able to do that cos she bought water at the service station which she was awfully kind to share with me. So we came pretty close to both turning up to the hike without water!

We set off around 8:45. The hike itself has a pretty constant gradient that’s not too steep but instantly reignited the burn in my thighs that was only just beginning to subside from doing a legs day for the first time in a very long time at the gym on Tuesday. Yep, 3 days later my legs were still recovering. I ought to do leg days more often than once in a blue moon. The hike starts off through a bit of scrub but fairly quickly starts heading up a ridge line through terrain with a lot of boulders. It was fun to hop our way up most of the trail and being along the ridge, there’s plenty of opportunity to catch some pretty stunning views of the vast expanses of rural land through the trees. Towards the top it gets a little bit scrambly, with one or two nice little climbing sections. Definitely a great course for beginners looking for just a touch of challenge.

We got to the top by 10:30. We finished Kirsty’s water bottle at the top then fill it with my hot mate water to let it cool down for the descent. We left it to cool in the shade while we had a little bite to eat and chilled for a bit on the peak. There’s a little helipad and antennae station at the top which provided us with some well appreciated shade.

The way down was nice and cruisy. Kirsty slipped over twice in quick succession completely out of the blue! I skidded a couple of times too near the bottom, the ground was just so hot and dry! I had to put shoes on a couple of times cos the ground just got too hot for me to handle. I also had a little spider crawl onto the underside of the front of my hat, ie right in front of my face, which resulted in some lighting fast reflexes to get that hat the fuck off my head. Spiders are fine, but only when they call ahead to let you know they’re coming. I’ve got no time for the sort that like to turn up unannounced.

We were on the road again by noon and headed straight to the nearest service station to get electrolytes and ice-cream! It was a lovely hike, thanks so much Kirsty for coming with me, I thoroughly enjoyed our chats 🤗