Murchison River Gorge - Day 5
Murchison River Gorge Index
Regrouped
After regrouping, we continued to make our way northwards up the gorge. We came upon a 'kayak station' of sorts soon after, where we realised that we could not proceed and were forced to cross over to the east bank. The others had their packs enclosed in layers of plastic bags and rain covers which allowed the packs to float for a short while. I on the other hand, had a lot of sensitive electronic equipment so chose to inflate my sleeping mat and 'ferry' the pack across on top of the mat instead. We continued to walk along the gorge once we had made the river crossing, in the shallows of the banks, practically hugging the cliff face, before being able to climb back on to the ledge once again. The wind seemed to pick up here and whistled through the canyon, the only sound not drowned out being the "Plop! Plop!" of the water as it bobbed up and down in the hollow undercuts at the base of the canyon.
We reached another section of the gorge that was impassable not too long after, leaving us with just two choices - to descend down to the water, or to ascend up to the top of the cliff. We ended up choosing the latter and clambered up the cliff, zig-zagging our way up, and breaking off chunks of rock and kicking down loose scree in the process. We followed the contour for a while after reaching the top, and then descended down a gully that gave way to a scree path that lead all the way downwards.
We emerged out onto a field of rocks that were strewn across the river, with a grove of trees along its side that looked like it would make decent shelter. Despite being surrounded by dead branches and kangaroo (Macropus spp.) bones, we decided to make camp, thoughts of dinner drowning out everything else.
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