Stony Creek, Mount Walsh National Park: 31-06-2012 - 01-07-2012The weather didn't play nice so I was only able to walk in, camp overnight and then walk out the next day. I'm glad I made this choice as there were some flash floods on Saturday night and you would not want to be caught in Stony creek when the water came up.
This is a tough area to walk in as the grades are very steep and there are no tracks. The picture below gives a bit of an idea of the grade. My GPS was happy to record 150 - 200% grades in places! I have two black toenails to prove it!
- Steep Grades
I managed to skirt some contours that ventured just outside of the National Park on the way in, but felt guilty with the number of 'Keep Out' signs that on the return trip I took the high road, which saw much higher grades on the way down.
I lucked in when I got to stony creek as I found a relatively easy path down - you need to be careful here as quite a bit of the creek has cliffs with 6-10 meter drops. If you follow the actual National Park boundary you should be okay - I cut the corner a bit. The spot I came out onto the creek was the place I ended up camping. A beautiful creek setting with that magic 'trickling' sound of water.
- Stony Creek Camp Area
I took a short walk back down the creek and did find one flat spot that a tent would have been okay on, but as can be seen below, the advantages offered by a hammock are put to good use here. Actually from this point on I didn't see any place that I would be happy to put a tent.
- Rockin' Hammock
- No Room For A Tent
Before I camped for the night I managed to get about half way up Stony creek to where I had hoped to get before turning back - I just wasn't confident enough to continue on with a bit of rain around, which makes the rocks super slick, and the weather looking like much more rain to come on the following days.
Came across a 'forest' of butterflies - as I walked through this area I disturbed them and they swarmed around, it was a very unique experience. Very hard to capture them in flight so I settled on showing them once they had settled. There were hundreds of them.
- Butterfly Forest