Today was another full one. Sorry but there may be too many photos. First stop was Hancock Gorge where we embarked on a much shorter (than Mount Bruce) Class 5 hike to go through the gorge. We scrambled over large rocks, scaled vertical walls over the water and eventually found ourselves at Kermit’s Pool. The water was unbelievably cold here. I wore my GoPro on my head cause I couldn’t hold a phone while doing this and got some ‘action’ shots 🙂 .

Once we were all hypothermic we worked our way back up the gorge, and up the stairs to the carpark where we had some lunch. Then it was time to attack Handrail Gorge…. We headed to this one via a gorge floor walk before getting into the serious Class 5 hiking stuff again.

We were warned by others that this gorge was even colder than Hancock (someone told us today that Hancock water temp was 10 degrees – that sounds pretty low, but I can say I probably haven’t swum in colder water). That was enough for Sue and I to sit this one out and watch the others explore further into the gorge. We took the ‘fast’ route out of the gorge and ascended the steps rather than the gorge to extract ourselves.

We then headed to a lookout which is the intersection of 4 of the gorges – the two we traversed today and a couple of others.

Then it was back to the camp an hour or so away, while watching the ominous clouds in the general direction of where we were headed. We made it back without rain through the roof hatches and watched as the storm skirted the campsite.

Bob and I have spent the evening catching up on admin and photos ready to head out again tomorrow. Karen headed out to the local gorges and enjoyed the sunset colours.

Tomorrow’s plan is to attack a single gorge which is only accessible by 4WD and has a reasonable hike to get there…..