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| Mt Giles, the ultimate destination of this walk. |
Mt Giles isn’t a mountain that gets climbed a lot, unlike the nearby Larapinta Trail, Mt Giles only welcomes around thirty people a year (judging by a quick Feral survey of the summit log book). There are a few a reasons for that, the summit is a long way from the nearest formed track, the approaches not only being off piste but also across kilometres of spinifex (spinifex is an incredibly prickly grass that I’ll be picking out of my skin for the next couple of months), there is no permanent water out there, and finally the climb is a fair scramble up some very loose rock. Yep, what could go wrong?
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| James' is all dressed up and ready to head off into the desert. |
Before I could even set foot on the mountain though I had a drive of over 2000 kilometres just to get to the start of the walk, picking my mate James up in Alice Springs on the way through (he was up here on holidays with his family and somewhat foolishly thought a walk in the desert was a pretty good idea!). Arriving at the car park at Ormiston Gorge we packed a few last minute things, pulled on our boots and gaiters, took one last swig of water, grabbed our packs and headed off into the desert. Well actually we headed 20 metres to the information shelter where we took our first stop while we swatted up on what was to come….then we headed off into the desert.
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| We'd walked around 20 metres when we had our first stop (hey, you see that very fit bit, they were obviously thinking of the Feral walker when they penned that!). |
So off we trotted in the direction of Mt Giles. Thankfully the walk actually starts off very easy (some might say deceptively easy) following the Pound Walk Track. The Pound Walk is a half day walk that climbs the outside wall of Ormiston Pound, before dropping down and looping through the western end of the pound and heading back through Ormiston Gorge to the car park. We were following this excellent walk for the first three or four kilometres until it reached the floor of Ormiston Pound this morning. Now I haven’t mentioned the weather yet (don’t worry I’ll rectify that oversight over the next couple of posts!), well it was hot, bloody hot. In fact it was too hot to do this walk really with a predicted high today of 35˚ and not much less tomorrow, but having driven for two days to get here and with absolutely no room to move as far a getting back home to work, we basically decided to head off and see how we’d go, if it got ridiculous we could always retreat back to the ute. We did actually have one stoke of good luck weather wise and that was the overcast conditions that we started walking under this morning, we were lucky enough to make it to the high point at the Ormiston Pound Lookout before the cloud started to break up and the day really warmed up.
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Crossing the bone dry Ormiston Creek we were following track markers for the Ormiston Pound walk initially.
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It looks like the NT Parks people have re-routed and added bit of length to the Pound Walk.
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Approaching the saddle that not only marks the turn off to the Ormiston Pound Lookout but also would provide our access to the Pound floor.
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Even on this overcast morning the view from the lookout was pretty sweet (here's a Feral tip, the view is better from up near the Ghost Gums further along the ridge line).
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| Ormiston Creek snaking it's way across the pound into Ormiston Gorge. |
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After taking in the view back to Ormiston Gorge from the lookout we dropped down the good track towards the floor of Ormiston Pound. It looks like the Northern Territory Parks people have actually re-routed this section of the pound walk a little. The track now tracks another 4 or 500 metres further east before reaching the floor of the pound, this is actually a really good thing as it got James and I another 4 or 500 metres closer to Mt Giles before we had to leave the track and strike off across country through the spinifex. With the Pound Walk slowing arcing around to the west across the floor of Ormiston Pound we somewhat reluctantly left the nice track and set off towards Mt Giles, getting our first spinifex pricks within about a minute…yeah, this was shaping up as a looong day!
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If you squint you can see James waiting for me in the saddle.
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I'm sure this is a new section of track.
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The new section of track got us a few hundred metres closer to Mt Giles before we had to start pushing through the spinifex.
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| Dropping down to the pound floor along the Ormiston Pound Walk. |
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Off piste now we tracked along the base of the mountains that form the southern wall of Ormiston Pound, I was trying to stay around half way between the base of the mountain range and Ormiston Creek down in the middle of the pound. I figured if we got too close to the creek things could get a little scrubby and if we got too close to the mountains we’d be climbing in and out of too many steep gullies that drain the mountains. Although we couldn’t yet see the whole of Mt Giles we could see enough so that navigation wasn’t really an issue, picking our way across the fractured undulating and scrubby floor of the pound was the biggest issue we were dealing with now….oh and the heat, the morning cloud having well and truly burnt off now.
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It doesn't look that hard does it, pushing through the spinifex is a pain though....literally!
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The destination was in sight for the whole walk so navigation wasn't a big issue.
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There are a quite a lot of small rises and falls on the walk across the pound floor.
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| The go across here was to pick the areas with the least amount of spinifex to push through. |
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We were now heading east until the closest ridge line to our south stopped and we could get our first views towards the southern face of Mt Giles. The good news was that after the first three or four kilometres of cross country travel the spinifex thinned out a little and consequently the walking got a whole lot more comfortable. It was hot though, we were now more or less walking from tree to tree, with the trees sometimes a kilometre or so apart, every tree with their welcome patch of shade was met with some relief. With the ridge line that we’d been tracking receding behind us and the south face of the Mt Giles Massif now in view we started to make our way down a long, low ridge towards Ormiston Creek.
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We tracked along beside this ridge line to our south for the first couple of hours.
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By now we were navigating from tree to tree to get some relief from the heat.
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Mt Giles was looking a lot closer now, we still had to swing around to the south side of the mountain though.
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| One of the joys of walking in the desert at the end of summer. |
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I haven’t mentioned water yet have I? Well I’d talked to the local ranger before setting off and he’d been very sceptical of our chances of finding water out here, apparently they hadn’t had any substantial rain up here since Christmas 16/17 (ironically enough the last time I was up here). He was pretty sure that if we did find any surface water then it probably wouldn’t be potable. To make things even more problematic it was pretty well impossible for us to carry enough water to complete this walk without supplementing our supplies somewhere. So we’d come up with a plan to carry around 10 litres of water each, which was enough to get us to the base of the mountain and back to the ute safely, actually climbing the mountain was contingent on us finding some more water somewhere out here in the desert this afternoon. Our first possibility was where we’d cross Ormiston Creek on our way to Mt Giles but dropping down into the sandy bed of the creek it quickly became apparent that Ormiston Creek wasn’t going to be supplying us with any extra water. Wandering up stream a few hundred metres to a rocky ckoke point I could see where there would normally be a substantial waterhole in a good year, but this afternoon there was only an inch or so of green slime. The local kangaroos had dug holes in the creek bed to get water and while that water would keep us alive I wasn’t going there unless everything turned all Burke and Wills on us!
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The south wall of the pound.
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Looking back across Ormiston Pound towards Ormiston Gorge.
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| Climbing away from Ormiston Creek. |
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The rocky choke point in Ormiston Creek is a pretty important navigation way-point as well, it marks the spot to leave the sand bed of the creek and head off towards the base of Mt Giles. We now climbed fairly gently along a long ridge, the seemingly impenetrable ramparts of Mt Giles now starting to tower ominously over us as we got closer to the mountain. This long ridge is dissected by some gullies that drain the south side of Mt Giles and these gullies were now our best chance of finding water. Dropping into the first gully we headed up stream towards some medium sized eucalyptus trees, as good as any place to start checking for water. Now while I’m sure that there was plenty of underground water feeding these trees, above ground things were bone dry (and baking hot) and the gully didn’t look promising at all. Hmm, one down and two to go.
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This rocky choke in Ormiston Creek quite often holds water (not on this walk unfortunately) and is a good navigational reference.
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The mountain was getting very close now.
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We were now climbing this broad ridge.
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| Looking back across Ormiston Pound, the Larapinta Trail runs along that ridge line for a stretch. |
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Climbing out of the first gully it was only a few minutes before we arrived above the second gully, now this one looked a little more promising. Dropping into the gully we walked up the dry steam bed for a few minutes until we arrived at a spot shaded by reasonably high cliff. Dropping the packs in the very welcome shade we continued on climbing the dry creek bed, the creek heading towards a very substantial slot canyon cleaved into the side of Mt Giles. There were signs that water flowed down here fairly often but unfortunately things were still bone dry today, when we reached another bone dry cascade James decided he’d had enough and decided the cool shaded rocky terrace would make a good spot to lay down and chill out for awhile. This creek was definitely our most likely chance of finding water so far, so I continued rock hoping my way up stream and bugger me, after another 10 minutes or so I arrived at a waterfall blocking the gorge and at the base of the waterfall there was a small pool of clear water, hey, hey, happy days!
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Approaching the second gully, that's our climbing spur the middle distance.
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The second gully might of been dry but at least the shady terraces made a good spot to rest without being assaulted by the spinifex.
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It was only when I found his water that I was confident that we'd have enough water to be able to climb Mt Giles tomorrow.
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I scrambled up the water fall but things were pretty dry up here.
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| The gullies make nice places to explore a little, out of the harsh desert sun. |
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Returning to James I gave him the good news, for the first time since setting off I was now confident that we’d actually be able to climb the mountain. Retreating back down stream we grabbed our packs and found somewhere flat to bivy for the night. James using the remaining sunlight to explore the third gully where he also found a bit of water, although the green pond didn’t look overly inviting so we decided to stick with the water in the second gully. With the sun sliding below the western horizon it was two fairly second hand walkers that crawled into bed nice and early, today had been hard but tomorrow promised to be even tougher…..
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The third gully had a bit of water too, but it looked a little festy to me.
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The scenery from camp was pretty sweet.
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The Dirt.
We walked around 14 kilometres and climbed around 500 metres (there are a lot of short and sharp climbs across the floor of Ormiston Pound) on this hard days walking. We camped on some flat ground just before the second and third gullies converge south of Mt Giles, this was ideal as our climbing spur tomorrow started between the second and third gullies. We were lucky enough to find water in both the second and third gully, the second gully was the pick of the water. I’m thinking this spot is known as Giles Spring, although that may be another Feral Fact? Now as I’ve already waffled on about I found water in the second gully, the exact location was S 23˚38.966’ E132˚49.556’ at around 798 metres elevation. The water in the third gully was trickling into a festy green pond and didn’t look overly appealing. For such a remote and infrequently visited spot there is actually quite a bit of info floating around about this walk. Probably the first place to start is the NT Parks site, it’s got free notes and topo map to download. After that hunt out and old copy of Lonely Planets Bushwalking in Australia (the last edition written by Mr Chapman), he’s described the walk in his normal detail (Mr Chapman also has some stuff on his website about this stroll), the next set of notes to look for are the John Daly’s out of his Take a Walk Northern Territory book. There is also a great blog to hunt out for this walk, a young bloke named Jez who has a blog called
Notes from a Trail Head, Jez’s blog is full of factual and useful information.
Relevant Posts.
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