Today was our last day in Karijini. It’s been such an incredible week. Huge variety in the gorges and rock formations, and I think I can honestly say I have never hiked the elevations we have achieved this week in my life – some on steps, some on ladders, and lots scrambling and pulling up over rocks. Happily, I don’t have any sore muscles. I am feeling fatigued though and looking forward to some downtime (maybe) as we move on to our next locations. Note to self: even spent knees can do amazing things! Today, there were a couple of locations that I simply couldn’t traverse on my own. Thanks to Jason for propelling me up those spots that needed a little jet fuel.

Today was Knox Gorge and Joffre Gorge. A hurried google search when we were on the way indicated that Knox was a Class 5 hike and Joffre was a combo Class 4 and Class 5. So in order to get the hardest out of the way in the morning we headed directly to Knox. The temps have been rising steadily all week and hiking today was quite warm. However the water in these gorges are known to be some of the coldest in Karijini. Only Karen and Kieran braved swims today.

Knox started with an unformed descent into the gorge which made me apprehensive about the climb out. There were some vertical wall scaling sections that we have started to get used to and an absolutely amazing chasm style finish to the hike at the swimming hole.

We ate lunch back at the carpark once we’d extracted ourselves from the gorge and then proceeded on to Joffre Gorge. We traversed around the rim of this one before our descent via ladders and rock scrambles. The pool at the bottom was lovely, however I really did love the reverse view down the gorge which we explored on our way out.

We were back at the campground before 4 and at 5 we all couldn’t help ourselves and met back up for one last hike down Dales Gorge for a swim at the Fern Pool. No cameras, just a lovely dusk swim and waterfall pummel before ascending the 300 stairs out of the gorge one last time. What a memorable week we have all had.

Tomorrow we all depart. The Allen’s are heading via Port Hedland and we will see them in a couple of days. The Scott’s have plans in Tom Price tomorrow and the plan is to meet up with them at Millstream tomorrow night. Back on the road again 🙂 .