North Stradbroke Island fatpacking trip

A loose itinerary, sketchy details, a map that closely resembled a pirate map of hidden treasure and a couple of blokes escaping something - responsibilities, society and good hygiene.

Yep, that about sums up a fatbike 'packing trip to the islands. A buddy and I planned out a weekend ride to Stradbroke Island - another island jewel in Moreton Bay, off the coast of Brisbane. Straddie is a bit different to Moreton Island, in that it has pristine beach oceanside, with mangrove on the bayside and countless inland tracks - including a bit of secret singletrack. Change of gameplan for route choices and no shortage of million dollar camp sites - read on to experience the awesomeness of a Straddie adventure...

...but it's gotta start somewhere. Ride from work to train station; train to Cleveland.  

Water taxi Cleveland to Dunwich on bayside of island. Piece of cake - people bring on all sorts of stuff - surfboards, eskies, wheelbarrows, building materials etc

Peel Island and Horseshoe bay, a great kayak spot, with a bit of snorkelling on a reef on the south eastern end.

Arrived Dunwich, then it's approx 13km overland to the beach via the East Coast/Mining/Tazi Rd, good bitumen road with a few hills. A few showers had rolled through and plenty of puddles about. The tide was still going out, plenty of firm packed beach so road pressure and fast pace... but I always allow time to compose a pic when conditions are favourable.

Wayne was already at a random south camp location and we'd discussed a few scenarios to find each other:

• Lat and Long co-ordinates
• Marco - Polo
• cryptic SMS

Wayne had set up his blinky light as a locater beacon for the beach exit. However, several other campers had a similar system. Before long, I spotted him with head and taillights signalling like he was guiding a jet to land on an aircraft carrier, or some sort of moonlanding (fatbike boom-tish).

Skip the next three pics if you're not interested in food pics and bivvy setup - 'coz that is overshared on social media - 'here is a pic of the wonderful meal I had at blahblah restaurant...'

So, still with me - good. Dinner was basically whatever I scraped out of the camp larder - I had some cup noodles left over from NZ, cheese wedges with vegemite on multigrain muffins, cup-o-soup and bacon cheesy mac and tin tuna. Muffins are an awesome staple, they squash down into any carry spot. I made up a 'fourth pocket' for the Kiwi brevet to carry overflow food and junk.

Onto bivvy setup - simple hammock, siltarp, bug net and hoodless down bag. I use the bag over the hammock to maintain insulation loft. The bugnet clips to a loop on the bottom of the siltarp. A siltarp is so versatile for simple or complex setups, here it's angled for any rain runoff and prevailing winds.

I reckon the mozzies were sent by the Red Cross, because they sure did extract a lot of blood. You'd climb into the bivvy, clear out of any bugs that followed you in, then settle in. 5 mins later you'd be getting hits, headtorch revealed the bugnet full of mozzies - they were getting in via the smallish gap between hammock and bugnet. I normally just drape the bugnet, weight it with pegs. The biters were voracious - this time I pegged the sides of the bugnet together underneath the bag like a chrysalis.

Up before dawn to take in the majestic first light, to beachcomb and to explore.

Two dunes back, we had an offshore breeze fan away the biters during brekky.

The neighbours were pretty cool about our presence.

Speaking of brekky...in wifeys' shopping travels she found these miniature tubs of Nutella - love this stuff! Muesli, muffin, hot chocolate - the usual.

As is the case with S24O and other non-fast-and-light trips, you get to test gear and new processes. I've done pancakes before with stainless steel frypans, but wanted to trial it with my ti pan. Titanium cookware may be very light and tough, but it has poor heat management. I made up a heat diffuser out of some 2mm aluminium treadplate, with slots cut for the legs on the Kovea stove. The pan is an Evernew non-stick pan. Verdict: don't bother with pancakes.

Broke camp and we had about 10km of this doubletrack through the she-oaks.

Along the way I found a wild white passionfruit vine high in the tree, the ground was littered with fruit. I grabbed 4 and shoved them in the 4th pocket for later. Bush tucker for dessert tonight...

The views would poke through occasionally, the offshore breeze glazed the ocean into a turquoise pool.

We meandered along some sidetracks, until the trail led us back to the beach. We passed many fishos with stunned faces, as usual they thought we were motorbikes. Also met a lady from Pt Lookout, she was a wealth of information on the future of a trail network on the island, after the sand mining is done.

Here is a poor quality clip of some of the areas, I've trimmed short a clip of a 3 minute descent on some sweet secret singletrack.

We were heading back inland - Wayne had to catch the ferry back, smoko was planned for Blue Lake. This is a window lake - a depression in the topography reveals the water table in that area - and the water was pure and clear with excellent visibility to the white sandy bottom.

Wayne *eventually* dragged himself away for the ride back to the ferry, I was more focused on making an arse groove in the hammock for the arvo. Blue lake drains off into Eighteen Mile swamp. The water here is quite pure and provides a significant amount of fresh drinking water to the Redlands shire on the mainland. Non-toxic traceable dyes have been added at several locations, even several hundred kilometres away in Toowoomba, to trace the source. The thought of a swim was tempting, but I had so many synthetic chemicals on me (sunscreen, DEET in the Bushmans etc) I was in no mood to destroy what I came to enjoy. The frogs thanked me with their song :) 

 



The passionfruit taste as good as they look. The mosquitos here were pretty hungry too, dinner and washup was done before sundown, I was in bed by 6pm.

 

To better seal the bugnet, I slept with the sleeping bag inside the hammock. I knew this was a bad move insulation wise (you lose loft and insulation power when you compress the air space around the fibres/down filling of your bag) and woke up shivering a few times. Your body is an amazing heat machine though - a few ab crunches and muscle flex-and-holds (just like you do in the mirror at home, right?) of the larger muscle groups creates a lot of warmth. The topography added to the cold too, cool moist air pools in the valley.

...but so worth it when you can enjoy the sunrise like this during brekky and pack down.

Recent fires raged through this part of the island, but it's great to see so much fresh growth. Some forests need fire for seed germination and nutrient cycling, but no forest needs a fire that's been caused by an untended campfire - which was how this fire started.

Straddie differs to Moreton (check out my other adventures on Moreton) so much - but one thing is a constant, there are plenty of places to get some solitude.

I explored a few 4wd tracks, this place is called Keyholes, a series of clear freshwater lagoons at the northern tip of Eighteen Mile swamp.

Blue Flax Lily - more bush tucker - edible berries, I grabbed a handful to nibble on as I rode.

 

 

My tyres are bigger than yours buddy. When I get old, cranky and unable to turn a pedal, a BMW GSr1200 will be on the shopping list, as well as that Unimog expedition truck...

 

...but till then, there's still millions of km to explore by bicycle.

Here you can see the 4th pocket bag mentioned previously. I often ride in a long sleeve shirt with no pockets on the back, yet still need to carry overflow food and other junk. I made it from an old single knee warmer and the straps and clips from an old helmet - total recycling - with a short strip of Velcro sewn into the top as a closure . Single strap over the shoulder with a stabiliser around the left hip, just like any messenger style bag. It works very well, the fabric stretches well to suit the load and still enables your back to vent heat and sweat. Why is this important? On ultra multidayers, you want to minimise the sweat in your clothing layers (including chamois)  so the better vented your body is, the drier you'll be at the end of the day, your body will be more efficient at cooling (you MAY consume less water, lose less electrolytes and stink less when you rock up to the pub for a counter meal) and you can minimise chamois/skin related issues. Good for the gooch!

I rode as much beach as possible from Pt Lookout, I planned to ride to Amity but only got as far as Flinders beach, due to tide and lots of tree debris at high tide mark.

 

Summing up, Straddie is a great fatbike destination, with enough asphalt infrastructure to traverse some sections quickly, but enough solitude to pack into a week. Once the sand mining operations wind up, this should open up more areas to recreation, however there are plenty of established fire and maintenance tracks to keep the explorers happy. We'll be back.

Iditabike camp - day 5 - and feelin' alive!

It was a strange thing to wake up to the sound of rain on your sleeping bag. Yes, freezing rain. A warm front had moved through the night, with it came showers of rain, then a return to cold temps, that dropped progressively behind the front.

Put simply - your stuff gets wet, then freezes. I was using several key layers in my system so I wasn't concerned about getting core wet. My outer bag was a Mont Helium 450 with gossamer thin Pertex Quantum face fabric (not a laminated waterproof membrane fabric) with a DWR. It wetted out quickly and the down clumped severely. I then had a Mont Bell down hugger bag, then an S2S reactor liner - I was still pretty toasty - and just tucked myself deeper into the bag with just a tiny breathing hole for my mouth.

I had a tarp, but didn't bother getting up to use it - I really wanted some intel on how the bags would stack up to wetting out in the field. I also had an OR Alpine bivvy - but it was back at the cabin. Alaska was always teaching us lessons.

A positive though - I stow a Clif bar in the jacket pocket each night, a nice warm Macadamia and white choc bar to eat in the morning!

 

I managed a 12 hour rest despite the rain. I felt refreshed, my jetlag gone and my resting heart rate was back down to sub 60. Those previous late nights with the group just weren't doing me any favours!

 

In this pic you can see the loft loss in my bag (sounds like an Austrian mountain town - Loftlosseinmaberg :) ) from the rain. If I had more nights out here, I would have been in a precarious position - because the down had clumped due to moisture, it then froze into lumps when I stowed it into the stuffsack - put simply I'd be continuing on with no lengthy sleep until I could dry it out. Later that day, when I unpacked it at the B and B, it was like unpacking a frozen gel first-aid ice pack! I knew this bag wasn't suitable for the full extremes, but it did pretty well in venting body moisture and keeping loft, which was the main premise for this bag choice. My Exped Waterbloc 800 or 1200 will be the bag of choice for racing in 2015.

 

 

Anything not covered got sugar frosted with ice crystals...

 

Down to the serious business of food. The stove is an MSR Whisperlite International, setup for white liquid fuel - runs on stove fuel, shellite and unleaded petrol. For cookware I used a 900mL and 600mL Evernew ti pot set that nests. The 900mL was used for melting snow and the 600mL for eating from. I used the 900mL pot lid as my reflective base under the stove, and the 600mL lid to scoop the snow into the pot. I had 2 x 1L nally bottles to fill for water, as well as my insulated camelback bidon. The bidon worked very well, my logic being to consume it before it froze, however a thermos with hot chocolate or soup will be a better bet for race days.

 

 

Ahh, the culinary double down delights of apple/cinnamon AND strawberries and cream Quaker Oats - a flavour fusion of epic proportions :) You won't see this on MKR or Masterchef.

Washing up time was simply stir in some snow around the pot and voila! Dishes done.

I packed my gear and got rolling, was about -15C and the wind was beginning to rise. I bivvied near the bank of the Susitna River, so still had a ways to go back to base camp. The trail was already starting to cover up, there were no other tyre tracks, just the old irondog tracks and reflective trail markers. You don't need a lot of light to illuminate the trail in snow, however the light from my 1100 lumen Exposure Diablo at full power got swallowed by the inky blackness over the dismal swamp.

That orange speck you see behind me was the moon setting, a giant fireball in the sky. Reminded me of a Neil Young song 'Goin' back'. Chorus "I feel like goin' back, back where there's nowhere to stay...When fire filled the sky, I still remember that day..." During camp I was hoping to see some aurora activity to really drive home this song. 

 

Sorry about the blur folks, best I could do in the wind, full zoom on the compact and no tripod...

I made it back to the cabin to listen to tall tales from the previous night. The bunch made it up to the roadhouse for a burger, Renzo stood in some overflow and most of them were pretty much running on empty by the time they rolled into a bivvy site or back to base camp for a few brewskis.

 This was our last morning on the trail, and many were finding it hard to leave the sanctuary of the base camp cabin...

I didn't win the beard growing contest.

Time came to leave basecamp to ride the 30 odd km back to Pt Mackenzie. The temps had been steadily falling all morning, the trail had that 'wet shaving cream' look about it and was squeaking under the tyres (so many different phases of snow) - this can be another indicator of how the temps change throughout the day - was down to about -20C at this point and the wind was picking up.

I was given the task to lead the group back through Wednesdays' navigation exercise route, basically a short cut back to the main pipeline road, without having to traverse the lake - but it cuts out some sweet whoopy trail. The overflow section had grown a bit, was super icy and great fun on studless tyres.

For sure the prettiest type of trail you'll ever ride - narrow, groomed machine trail surrounded by snow laden Spruce. Stickboy on second wheel, and displaying his healthy, outdoorsman beard.

 

We hit the main trail back, we had a solid quartering tailwind with flurries blowing across the trail. The temp was -30C or so with the windchill, red mist set in and the ride turned into an all out individual time trial back to the rendezvous point. It was a race of attrition - we half wheeled, we wheel sucked, we jostled for the best lines in the snow, Stickboys BB seized. As the finish got closer, the pack started to string out, I decided to hammer down for the win, by a good margin. I was elated. The prize was driving the Dodge van from the storage yard to the Pt Mackenzie General Store. I'm a simple guy of simple pleasures - and driving the van on the icy road was pretty cool to me. 

 

 

We loaded up the bikes and gear, drove back to Anchorage, all chatting about the highs and lows of camp. Some of the guys were entering the 2014 race as rookies, most were flying home and another was resupplying in Anchorage then heading north, solo along the Iditarod. My travel plans from here were to Portland, Oregon, for some work conferences and a multi-day back country bikepack trip through Oregon, where I'd be putting my new knowledge and skills to the test.  

 

Kathis' words "You don't get Bills signature on that certificate easily - you gotta earn it!"



It's now proudly displayed in my den and is a constant reminder of why I want to be back there. The Iditarod Trail Invitational to me embodies an adventure race like no other, in an environment that is as challenging as it is beautiful. The philosophy ensures its place as an extreme race, it's no mystery why it has been consistently voted in the top 10 most extreme endurance races in the world.

 

To Bill and Kathi, thank you for your instruction, drawing from your lifetime of experience and knowledge - it is highly valued and respected. I won't let you down.

 

To the readers, I hope you enjoyed chapter 1 of this Ultimate Adventure, but there's still a ways to go. For me this whole trip ticked a lot of boxes, but I aint gonna blow the chunk of the story just yet: this chapter allowed me to fly in, build my transport with a multitool on a driveway (okay, heated garage), get snow up yer crack doing snow angels on the Iditarod trail (spot the aussie), display incredible abilities at changing a flat tyre in an artic environment (you had to be there to experience the awesomeness), live out of a frozen ziplock (it's not easy staying 'regular'), bivvy out with no care about 10 of the worlds most poisonous snakes, spiders, ticks, leeches, centipedes, scorpions, wild dogs, feral pigs (but moose, elk and wolves are all very friendly), talk about vicious dropbears and boxing kangaroos (and how tasty they can be), learn an amazing new skillset and experience a new and totally challenging environment. Yeah, it was pretty awesome.

 

Next stop is Portland, Oregon, USA...