We headed away to walk the Croesus track. I’ve never done it before, though I’d certainly heard of it. You can also bike it (if you’re a decent biker). One of the problems with the walk is that it’s _not_ a loop track, so, you end up with having to hitch / organise someone to drop you back to where you started. Fortunately, we have a friend Ivor, and Ivor knows things about stuff! Ivor’s suggestion was to dump a bicycle at the Moonlight Valley end, and then do a _sort of_ loop and simply bike the 15/20km back to Blackball at the end. So, that’s what we did.
Maaike had lots of days up her sleeve, and I have the luxury of being able, to some extent, make my own hours.. so, we headed off midweek (nice and quiet). It was quite a few hours up to the beautifully situated Ces Clark hut. Really lovely views, a nice pot-belly stove, and we had the entire place to ourselves.
The next day we were hoping that the weather would cheer up (it didn’t) so, we ended up starting walking at about 3pm or so. A little late. Our tramping book had suggested that there was a decentish camp spot “close to spot height 1147. I think our ideas of what constitutes a decent campspot are different. That said, we had quite bad visibility, so, it’s possible that there _were_ nice places and we just didn’t see it. So, it was a pretty uncomfortable night, though it definitely could have been worse.
Lovely walk out the next day down Moonlight Valley, can definitely recommend that. We did see quite a few people fossicking for gold at the end. Maaike had a nice chat with one of them while I went off to get the bike. I’d _thought_ there was an agreement that she’d start walking… but… I guess the lure of the gold was just too strong ;)
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