Larapinta Trail - Day 6 - Brinkley Bluff to Birthday Waterhole

This was another one of my favourite days! Watching the sunrise from the top of a mountain is always a great motivational way to start the day! Looking back now, I am so grateful to have been able to do this hike and experience this beautiful country.

My alarm was set for 5:15am, to give me time to start packing up my camp before sunrise photography time! I typically woke up before my alarm anyway - I was in bed asleep most nights before 8pm! The mosquitoes most nights were crazy… way worse than even camping around Darwin! And worse at the high points, not in the creeks as I would expect…. WHAT was with that?! Anyway, I found that I would take photos and then need to dive in to the tent to escape the mozzies.

Pre-dawn, pink glow looking back down the trail toward Standley Chasm

Brinkley Bluff was my first experience of a windy night. I didn’t lose heaps of sleep, but it was definitely one of my more disturbed nights!

Brinkley was also my first proper experience of a water carry. Yes, I’d done one up to Pravda Spur, but I knew that I’d find water quickly the following morning at Fig Spring (within 2 hours of me leaving the high point camp). With Brinkley Bluff, it was going to be another 8km that morning until I came to a reliable water source. That was probably going to be late morning. I’d carried 5l from Standley Chasm. I’d basically “budgeted” 3l of water for the first day. With 2l for the next morning. That included cooking as well as drinking. In the Top End that would be no where near enough! But I was definitely drinking less than I had in my first couple of days hiking this trail - the weather had cooled to be around 26 degree max temps. Which for me, meant much less water consumption as I’m used to 35 degrees hiking weather! As it happens, there was water in Stuart’s Pass when I walked out, had I needed it, but this would normally be a dry creek crossing. It was also littered with cow prints and smelled of manure… so I wouldn’t have been too keen if I HAD have needed water!

I was very thankful for the gaitors - they keep the grass seeds out of your socks, which can get very irritating!

The track coming down from the summit was no where near as bad as I had expected. I was concerned about the ascent of Brinkley the day before, yet I was also nervous about the descent on this morning. I’m much better and walking uphill than down. My knees do not like down hill at all! I am very wobbly and unbalanced when I’m heading down hill with the extra force of a 15kg plus backpack also trying to push its way down the hill! However, I was pleasantly surprised. The track descending from Brinkley Bluff was great - it zig zagged a lot, but that meant it wasn’t very steep and a much more gentle decline than I’d anticipated. I remember the way down from Pravda Spur being much more challenging… but my judgement may have been clouded by the excessive amount of up and downing as you come in to Standley Chasm!

I stopped at Rocky Cleft for my mid morning snack, though it was probably only around 8:30am and I’d probably only walked for an hour! It was just such a unique little pocket of shady habitat, I couldn’t resist a stop. There were lots of flowers the whole way down from Brinkley Bluff, but here there were different kinds of flowers that I just had to stop and take some shots of!

Crossing Stuarts Pass (around 2 hours from Brinkley Summit)

The USB charge point at Section 4/5 shelter, complete with Henrietta, a guarding huntsman spider!

I arrived at the trailhead between Section 4/5 at lunch time. I took advantage of the USB charge points here, and the toilet! I had a long lunch, topped up the water and took some time to do a little video update!

It did take me a few hours to walk down from the summit of Brinkley, but it was so photogenic I couldn’t rush! The morning was fairly coll and pleasant.

Update from Section 4/5 trailhead, chatting about my Brinkley ascent experience!

Heading down to Birthday Waterhole

Happy as Larry!

I was really excited to spend the night camped at Birthday Waterhole! As much as I’d enjoyed the mountain top camps and those views, I really just love camping next to water. I highly recommend it, if there’s water here (it’s a semi permanent hole, but I’ve never seen it empty). The water on my visit was the highest I’d ever seen.

The Larapinta Trail itself is around a kilometre from Birthday Waterhole. The waterhole is accessible by 4wd track, which ends just behind where I’m standing to take the below photo. The trail comes in to the right of the below photo. So I had to de-boot and wade through waist deep water to get to the track and main beach area. I could have camped on the Larapinta side of the creek, but there was a nice sheltered looking beach area I had my eye on, just to the right of this photo.

Check out the video at the bottom to see the whole camp!

This was where I saw the first people along the trail! Although they were at Birthday Waterhole, so technically not on the trail. The first people I’d seen since Standley Chasm kiosk. A couple from Darwin as day trippers along the 4WD track, and I met a couple of guys who were part of the “Friends of the Larapinta” - they were returning from an overnight trip doing some track marking through the section I was heading to. Basically up to Hugh Gorge (thanks guys - that pink tape was very handy!). They also told me that it was passable (and not pack floating as I’d heard from people at Standley Chasm!), and that there were beautiful waterfalls at Fringe Lily Creek (highly unusual!).

My camp at Birthday Waterhole