Day 6 - Camper Creek to Thresher Creek - July 3, 2013

Day Six - July 3, 2013


Camper Creek to Thresher Creek





Felicity fearlessly navigates  one of the quagmires

And then she is off. Down the trail then down slope to salt water and the beach route.  But we must hurry.  If the tide comes in and cuts us off we must retreat.  Losing a day is not a good idea my aching body tells me.





In time we leave the mud and muck for the ocean's edge.

There we gingerly pick our way over slippery rocks.

Then with billy goat grace leap the surge channels.





We are racing to round Grotto Corner (made up name) before the tide surges in and closes out passage.  There it is in the distance.


 
We round Grotto Corner as the tide
surges in, soon to close the way.





  
But tidal challenges remain in front of us.  For the blissful moment we advance further to a most wonderful place.


   




Grotto corner is beautiful!





Just beyond we find sand and sunshine, a beach isolated and beautiful.

Feasting and sunbathing we absorb the heat and loll about.








But the tide did not relax.  We had little sense of the rock and rubble that lay in front of us, our way increasingly impassible as the tide rose.  Those last few kilometres between us a Thresher Creek would challenge a billy goat.



We finished the day with several kilometres of boulder bounding and scrambling in the late afternoon sun.


 And then rounded the corner, as usual, the last of the hikers to make it in and pitch tent.

Not surprising since we were often the last to break camp in the morning.  Tomorrow, the cakewalk on to the River Jordan!