What possible better way to spend a friday night that bush walking in the dark?Armed with headlamps. glow sticks and thermal underwear all eight of the team headed out for our first walk with everyone present. This was more of an opportunity to test our kit (and our resolve) than put in serious Kms, so we followed the same route as our previous attempt on this section of the Trailwalker.
The headlamps went well, but a fair few off us experienced the drop in performance that you sometimes get with LEDs after an hour or so - a few sets of spare batteries will be needed to get us through on the actual day. We took additional torches but didn't use them, we'll continue to carry them though as most of our headlights, while great at close range, don't cast much of a beam and aren't so good for checking out the far side of streams looking for a soft dry landign point!
It was colder than expected - we noticed that warming up to the point of the usual stop to take off the top layer took longer, and cooling down when walking on the flat seemed almost instant. I'll be taking acouple more layers next time. Some of the team traded shorty skins for the full length version for extra warmth which worked well.
I was also lighter than expected - even under the forest canopy there seemed to be enough moonlight to make out the potholes and puddles - although you need a bit more than the ambient to check the depth... None of us managed to stay out of the water completly - wet feet all round be the end of the section, so we'll be packing a few pairs of dry socks and a small towel in our personnal gear.
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