Six of us from Geehi Bushwalking Club had a camp out weekend at Oldfield’s Hut. This provided a good base camp for us to visit Mt Morgan and Bimberi Peak.
To make the most of our time we travelled in on the Friday afternoon. It was hot and humid and the 1km climb up hill to the pass was more than we remembered from previous visits. But soon enough we made it to the hut and found our respective tent sites. On this first evening we had the location to ourselves apart from many grey kangaroos and wallabies, and very persistent mosquitoes once it was dark.
The next day, we agreed it would be interesting to see how the bush is recovering from the bushfires last summer.
With the birthday watermelon consumed, our return trip from Mount Morgan was much lighter and navigation back to the fire trail no challenge. Then it was a 2 hour march along the fire trail to get back to our base camp at the hut. It was interesting to see that not much had burnt out last summer and the sections that had burnt were starting to recover.
On our return to the hut we were met with distant thunder and some light showers of rain but nothing of note.
We were also met with two other parties of walkers who made for great company as it turned out.
One of the groups had been to Mt Bimberi and reported significant bushfire damage, with lots of debris and the previously well defined foot pad now invisible.
With that news and the general level of tiredness from our exertions we elected to skip the assault on Bimberi and save it for another time.
This would make the trip out the next day more leisurely. But first we had significant rain, wind and thunder during the night to survive. None of our tents were actually damaged, but it was certainly noisy.