We were waiting for our pick up from 7.30am and were a little alarmed at how cold it was. Turns out it got down below zero during the night so luckily we had packed our thermals! We passed the time waiting for the bus talking to another guest who was also doing the Laripinta though she was taking a vastly shorter timeframe than us at 12 days.
Our bus arrived and there was already 4 others on board and it didn’t take long for us all to compare itineraries. Everyone was really lovely and although none of us had even started the hike there was already a real camaraderie amongst us all.
Claire our driver gave us a few tit bits of information on the drive out and answered all our questions. It was also nice to know that everyone else had the same ones! It was quickly dawning on us how long this hike actually was when it was taking us about 2 and a half hours to get to the drop point. We definely knew we were in for some spectacular sights as every direction seemed to have another amazing range for us to look at.
We were dropped off at our first campsite Redbank Gorge. The campsite itself wasn’t much in that it had a toilet, two water tanks and a lean to. But the scenery was pretty spectacular. We ended up a little way away and set up along the river bank to give us a little privacy from the other hikers. We then sat down and ate our first freeze dried food of the trip. We did have real food for the day but we were going to be doing a sunset hike up Mt Sonder so decided to take our lunch time sandwiches up the mountain with us and eat our dinner for lunch. Tim’s chicken tikka marsala was a hit while my Indian curry was okay.
We quickly realised that if we wanted to go and see Redbank gorge first and then get hiking we had to get our butts into gear. The gorge was only about 1.5kms from our tent and although we didn’t have a lot of time to enjoy it, it was definitely worth the walk. The two sides of the gorge narrowing together were so beautiful. You could definitely see where red bank gorge got its name.
We hightailed it back and then set off up Mt Sonder. We were both a little nervous as it was going to be the hardest hike for us on the whole trip and we were going to be making the descent using our head torches as we would be at the top for sunset. The hike up was about 8kms and we would climb about 700m. Nothing we hadn’t done before though it was pretty hard going and took us about 3hours as the path was very rocky and uneven but the scenery more than made up for it.
At the top we were greeted with spectacular views of the other peak of Mt Sonder and the colours from the sunset were just stunning. We made the decent down with Jess who was on our transfer bus and spent the next 3 hours making our way down the mountain. Our head torches illuminated the path really well so it wasn’t too arduous on the way down. In saying that we were all pretty knackered when we arrived home at 9pm and jumped straight into our tent to sleep. The new fandangle air mattresses we purchased were worth every cent! Day 1 done and dusted. S