Up Mt. Sonder in the dark

On no night on the trail did I sleep right through. I usually woke repeatedly, after a few initial hours of uninterrupted sleep. I would lie on my back and watch the stars, or note the progress of the moon, listen to the cold night, then roll onto my side and soon doze off again. Sleep, wake, back and side, not frustrated (after the first couple days) but patient with the long dark.

I was hard asleep, though, when my watch alarm went off at four the last morning of the walk. Rachael and I had talked from the start of the Larapinta about making the Mt. Sonder ascent early, for the sunrise; we had spoken to others along the trail about the climb, always asking when they'd gone up. Some had left early in the dark, like we planned, and they all raved; others laughed and said, no, they had slept to a decent hour and hiked up in the light of day.

Rachael's cellphone alarm went off too, and after thinking for five minutes about how warm I was in my bag and how cold it would be outside, I sat up and unzipped the side door of the tent and climbed out into the chill and pitch black. In just a few minutes we were stumbling up the rocky wash, looking for where the narrow trail led off to the right.

The first portion of the eight-kilometer climb was the toughest, the path a jumble of big stones, and steep enough that you had to put a hand on your knee with each upward step. I had a headlamp, but Rachael did not have a light (nor did she have her contacts in). I pointed my headlamp straight down, and she walked right behind me; we tried to match our pace, so I didn't leave her in darkness, she didn't tread on my heels. My limited vision proved disconcerting at first, impairing my sense of equilibrium. I could see ahead only two or three feet, a distance I would cover in a step, a second of time, while what lay just beyond remained in absolute darkness. It was like walking in a long land dark closet, the floor covered with stones rather than shoes, while a strong crosswind swept out of the blackness. And while I figured I could trust the trail, I couldn't see that it didn't lead over a cliff two steps ahead. An odd sensation, moving forward yet unable to see ahead, and I put one foot in front of another more tentatively than usual.

After the first initial climb, the trail moderated, but continued upwards on a long ridge, rising in big chunks to one false peak after another. Not that I could tell we were on a ridge. I could sort of feel it, but really I had no sense of my surroundings, beyond the path and rocks within the small scope of my headlamp. Overhead two swathes of the Milky Way cut across a dark sky filled with stars. After we'd been on the trail for an hour, a red crescent moon rose above the horizon to the northeast, a bare sliver, companionable but providing no discernible light. We stopped and huddled close together, and somehow in the wind Rachael managed to put in her contacts.

At the first hint of light in the east we paused and I checked the watch: 6:20, and we still had two kilometers to go. Sharing the single light, we'd had to move a bit slow, but now we increased the pace. Before long, we didn't need the lamp in the early gloaming, and I surged ahead on a steep slope where the path was paved with large flat stones. I came up to a saddle and discovered a whole other peak to climb, the last one. I set off faster still, determined to make the top in time. The eastern sky turned red, the few clouds overhead orange. I settled into a trot, fell back into a walk when my breathing became labored. The last part of the trail led up through close-packed mallee bushes, and I couldn't see the eastern horizon. I began running, falling back into a walk for short stretches to recover; but I didn't pause to rest, figuring every minute counted. And anyway I felt strong, I felt up to this last and highest climb. Finally, at just after seven, and heaving huge ragged breaths, I came out on top. I was in time.

A stone and cement cairn marked the summit, and I sat down in its lee to shelter from the strong wind. A few minutes later Rachael appeared and said, "I was running."

After the rushing, we had ten minutes to spare before the sun rose over the Chewings Range in the east. In these moments I felt intensely happy, exhilarated with the combined bliss of a lovely sunrise, a high mountaintop, and a long walk completed.

Beside the cairn, Rachael heated water for our morning tea and muesli, and the muesli was the best I've ever eaten. I pulled a register from a slot in the cairn and we wrote our names in the book. We spun all around naming the mountains and features of the surrounding land, Mt. Zeil and Mt. Razorback and Mt. Giles, Gosse Bluff, and others; we could pick out some of our campsites of recent days, off to the west. I felt overwhelmed, ecstatic. The land about infatuated me; in the last two weeks I'd seen much of it close up, but I was left wanting more and more.

On the way down, I moved slowly, stopping often to admire the view, to savor the last few kilometers of hiking. Just below the summit I came upon a pair of Euros (hill kangaroos). They went darting off down a brushy defile, moving with amazing easy, hopping smoothly from rock to rock, using only their paired and powerful back feet for locomotion, and for balance their thick tails. Under the morning sun the path was a revelation. I kept stopping to turn around and look back up, trying to match the long ridge to the earlier walk up in darkness.

Halfway down I passed a group of hikers, the same group we'd seen at Counts Point days before. I knew them by the wild gray and wavy hair of one of the women, tanned and fit and in her sixties. They were accompanied by their guide, Shane, who later in the day would do us a great favor.

Back at camp, I took down the tent, and we loaded up our packs. At the nearby watertank I came upon Tony and Jac and Mike, who we'd met at Ormiston, and who had just arrived at Redbank after camping at Rocky Gap the night before. After Ormiston they had detoured to Glen Helen for a night of beers and steaks.

As we were talking, a young woman came up from her campsite in the wash to fill a water bottle. This proved to be Clare, of Sven and Clare, an Australian couple that I had never met but whose names I had seen repeatedly in the log books found at the start/end of each of the trail's twelve sections. Clare was young, in her mid-twenties, dark-haired, squarish in shape, and wearing long shorts and a tank top. She and Sven had been ahead of Rachael and me all along, and had been camped at Redbank for a couple days. I like the name Clare, and I had been imagining someone amiable and good-humored; but the actual Clare was superior and skeptical. She assumed the role of veteran and expert, treating us as if we were less seasoned and of questionable reliability.

She asked about several of the Larapinta's side trails, its extras. "Did you walk down to the Ochre Pits?" she asked Tony (near Serpentine Chalet Dam).

"No," Tony admitted, "we reckoned we could see those on the drive back, if we wanted" (the pits are near Namatijira Drive).

"Oh," said Clare, loading the single word with both disappointment and disapproval. She let it hang in the air for a moment. "Well," she finally said, "yes, I suppose you could see the pits that way. But it's the trail down that's really beautiful. Too bad you missed it."

She asked me if I'd walked the High Route, an alternative route, way back between Jay Creek and Standley Chasm. I told her no, I hadn't. That had been one of our longer, tougher days, and we saw no need to add in more climbing.

"Oh," Clare said, pursing her lips. Again the disapproving silence. "Too bad," she said, unsmiling, "that was a really beautiful stretch. Sven and I really liked it. We thought it was one of the best parts of the whole trail. Amazing views. Amazing. A shame that you missed it."

I just nodded, annoyed. And so it went, Clare naming parts of the trail, and seeming disappointed and yet also pleased when we hadn't done something she and Sven had.

"Did you go up to the real peak this morning?" she asked me. The "real" peak? I didn't understand, but said, yes, we'd been to the top. But she persisted, and eventually I understood that there's a second peak, a few feet higher than the one we'd been on. In the past people had climbed out to the other peak, but a narrow connecting ridge had crumbled away, and it's become too dangerous. "Sven did it," Clare, said, "he's done it a few times."

Clare and Sven had claimed the best campsite in the wash, but they were leaving in a couple hours. "We're going off trail, north up over the ridge, towards Mt. Zeil. Sven's been out there before, but we don't know if we'll find enough water. But, you know, we'll figure it out."

Tony asked Clare if they could put their packs over by her campsite, since they'd like to take it after she and Sven were gone. Clare hesitated, clearly not liking the idea. "I'd have to ask Sven," she said. Tony laughed, thinking she was joking. But just then Sven, tall and lanky and bearded and monosyllabic, came up. She did ask him. He grunted his assent with poor grace, and then went to the watertank to fill his bottle, not bothering to say anything else to any of us.

Tony went off with Clare to put his pack at the site, while Mike and Jac and I went up to the covered picnic tables at the carpark. Clare commenced a monologue on her and especially Sven's accomplishments, and it was a long time before Tony could join us for lunch.

Rachael was at the carpark, and had already asked a few people about a possible ride out to Glen Helen. No takers yet, but we still had hope.

Through much of the hot afternoon we sat in the shade at the picnic tables, eating nearly the last of our food and talking with Mike and Jac and Tony. I discovered, or inferred, that Tony is a pilot with Qantas. Mike showed us his broken down boots again, and said, "I'm going to have some words with them," "them" being the people at the store who had recommended the boots. Jac said that for the next trip he would prefer to go fishing; the two older men seemed happy and satisfied with their hike, but Jac never really took to it. Chris and Krystal joined us, after returning from a later morning climb up Sonder. Occasionally, an SUV would appear, and people would get out and hike up Redbank Gorge to the pool. Most of the vehicles were too packed with gear to allow for extra passengers.

The group of hikers led by Shane appeared and loaded into his Land Rover, which had long benches in the back. He had one extra seat, but we needed two, four actually, since Chris and Krystal also were hoping for Glen Helen. But then Shane said he'd come back for us in a couple hours, after he dropped off the others.

When Shane returned, he clambered easily to the top of his truck and we handed up our packs, which he strapped down. He's a wiry, dark-skinned man with dreads, soft-spoken and not prone to smiling though friendly. He owns the small guiding company, Trek Larapinta, and spends most of his days on the trail; he leads six, nine, and twenty day trips. Rachael sat in front with Shane as we bumped down the rough road. They have several mutual friends in Alice, and she talked about her sister Helen coming up from Melbourne to do the trail with his company. He said the current group had been challenging, but didn't elaborate. He also said that he tried not to memorize the trail, and that he liked showing people the MacDonnells. He lit up, in his subdued way, when describing non-commercial backpacking trips he'd taken, in particular, out to and up Mt. Giles. I felt some envy for the life he led.

At Glen Helen, Chris gave Shane twenty dollars for gas, though Shane didn't want it and tried to give it back; my sense was that he considered the ride a favor, a gesture of friendship, and the money changed that; but Rachael disagreed, saying it was fine, it just paid for the extra gas to come back for us, so I decided not to worry.

Glen Helen stood beside the road, on a flat just beside a high wall of red rock. It's what they call in Central Australia a "resort," though the word seems too fancy for the ramshackle all-in-one operation, one that reminded me of places you find on remote portions of the Alaska Highway. It consisted of a main building with reception, bar, and dining room, a gravel lot with hook-ups for caravans, a nearby stretch of grass for tents, a separate building with expensive but crappy motel rooms, and another section with wall tents, most often occupied by large tour groups. The resort was busy, apparently attracting all the travelers in the area, which is not surprise considering there's no other such place for quite some distance around.

At Glen Helen you could also have a helicopter ride; a pilot was on-site, ready to take up one or two people for twenty or forty-minute flights over the mountains and gorges (Chris and Krystal would go up the next morning, as a birthday present for Krystal; she was thrilled. Chris was quite good at making her happy). Glen Helen gorge, with a pool, was just a couple hundred yards down from the main building.

Inside the low and long and stuccoed main building, beside the bar, was an ice cream cooler, and first off Rachael bought us each a bar. She and I sat out back, looking at the red wall. I sighed, enjoying my chocolate and vanilla ice cream, glad for the semblance of civilization, but sad too to have left the trail.

Eventually we set up our tent and had showers at the nearby shower building. Rachael and I walked down to the gorge and looked at the pool. A couple, a young man and woman, came climbing down from the rock cliff on one side. The man was the helicopter pilot, in his late twenties, tall, with a goatee, originally from Wales. The woman was a bit younger, a barmaid at the resort, blonde, just a little pudgy. They both wore jeans. He had talked her into going up the ragged cliff; he was at his ease clambering about the rocks, she wasn't, but she appeared glad of his attention. She watched the pilot with a sarcastic and worshipful expression, wary and infatuated both. He didn't look at her, but kept her at his side, aware that he was being watched.

Rachael asked the young woman how she liked working at Glen Helen. "There's not much to do," she said.

The pilot put in, "there's lots," gesturing at the land.

"But you've been gone the last week," she said, with a bit of a pout. "The rest of them, they just play video games."

After dark, Rachael and I went to the bar and drank two short glasses of beer, Toohey's, and it tasted wonderful. The Trek Larapinta group gathered around a pool table, laughing and drinking and looking quite contented on their last night.

At the campground, a large group of French people had arrived in a tour bus. They gathered around a fire, talking loudly and not seeming at all interested in their swags thrown down on the ground nearby. But I fell easily to sleep nonetheless, and for a change slept nearly through the night.