17 December 2007

Sea to Summit Quagmire Goretex gaiters, the Mt Boobyalla track and leeches

Posted by Mick under: Equipment; Equipment Review; Hiking / Walking; Regions; Track Review .

As promised, on Sunday i strapped on my new Sea to Summit Quagmire Goretex gaiters for the first time while i was sitting on the top of Mt Donna Buang (1,250 m) just before i headed down the steep track on my way to add the 1,224 meter summit of Mt Boobyalla (in the Yarra Ranges National Park) to my bagged summits list…and i’m glad i did.

The first part of the track leading down from the Mt Donna Buang summit is pretty steep but its also pretty clear of stuff that might get in your way. The second part of the track follows a dirt road for a hundred meters before heading right and back onto a well formed walking trail. Once you get past a few old fallen and rotting trees and start to head up hill again the young ferns really start to take over the walking track which thins out to between 20 and 30 cms wide.

When you pass the turn-off to Cement Creek / Acheron Gap and start heading for the top of Mt Boobyalla, the track becomes even tighter (10-15cms wide) and I don’t actually reach the summit (checking GPS co-ords later to be sure) as i turned around when the track became a bit to thick for my liking and i couldn’t actually see my feet due to all the over growth.

On the way back to my starting point i thought to myself that the gaiters were performing quite well; my legs were pretty dry (it had rained all day the day before and a little bit that morning so everything was very wet), my legs hadn’t broken out into a sweat and were quite cosy considering it was around 9 degrees on the mountain top and the straps, velcro and boot clips had all stayed together nicely.

It wasn’t until i got back to the summit of Mt Donna Buang and sat down  to enjoy the atmosphere, when i realised just how glad i was that had bought the gaiters. I looked down at my legs and noticed about 50 or 60 tiny little leeches crawling around on each gaiter. I took the gaiters off, removed the little leeches, and didn’t find even one leech on my pants or on my legs…nice :)

 So…the Sea to Summit Quagmire Goretex gaiters get the big ExpeditionOz tick of approval and will without a doubt be part of my gear kit when i try to bag the summit of Mt Boobyalla in the near future.

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