Being mobile

I have plans in the near future to do some long term hiking and I’d like to make some blog posts while I’m hiking, so this is a test to see how feasible it is taking photographs and posting using only my phone.

I’ve been I’ve been taking quite a few photos with the phone for a couple of weeks now to see how it is. Nowhere near as good as my SLR camera, but the phone takes a pretty good picture.

The trip I’m planning is perhaps a little crazy and the closer I get to doing it, the more I wonder why I’m doing it. The thought first struck me when I heard someone on Facebook claim they were going to do a full end to end hike of the bibbulmun track while confessing they’d never hiked more than 10 km in a day and had never camped out overnight on a hike. You may say well so what? The bibbulmun track is a walking trail from Perth down to Albany a total of 1000 km.

That got me thinking. I love hiking and completed so many long hikes over the past couple of years, but I hadn’t done any overnighters in years, mainly because I didn’t have the light weight gear for camp out. So fast forward a couple of months. I’m down in Denmark only about 50 km from Albany working for a little while, what better opportunity to get myself prepared and do the bibbulmun.

There’s also a unique mountain bike trail called the Munda bidi which runs for 1000 km from Albany to Perth, that would also be a fantastic experience. And I bought a second hand mountain bike before I left Ballarat. Both trails begin and end in the same place though they both follow slightly different routes.

The yellow trail above is the Bibbulmun and the blue is the Munda bidi, and the blue dot at the bottom is where I am in Denmark. Surely the sensible thing would be to cycle up the munda biddi, then walk back down here along the Bibbulmun? Surely.

And there’s a green line on the left of the map, that’s the Cape to cape track, It’s only 130 km, sounds likea good warm up.

It’s an ambitious goal. By my calculations it will take close to 3 months for the two big trails if I don’t push it to hard. The munda biddi is sometimes finished in as little as 12 days by those who are travelling light and possibly a fair bit fitter than I am.

There are camping huts along the trail generally spaced about 50 km apart, what might be considered a good days ride. And if there’s no hut, then there will be a town where you can find various options for accommodation along with chances to resupply food. Ideally they recommend 3 to 4 weeks for completing the Munda bidi trail.

The Bibbulmun track has 49 huts and passes through 10 towns with most stops spaced about 20 km apart, a nice days hike when you are loaded up with gear. The recommended time for hiking this trail is between 50 and 60 days allowing for some rest days along the way. Of course it can be done far quicker, only a couple of days ago someone broke the track record running the trail in 11 days and a few hours. Not my style of trying to complete such an undertaking.

So I figure a month cycling, then 2 months walking should be a comfortable target. Not that comfort is really a word I would use to describe something like this.

Actually comfort is far from what I’ll be experiencing. I’ll update in the coming weeks with information about further planning, the gear I’ll be taking, food preparations and planning and anything else I think of along the way as I prepare.

Take photos with phone and make complete post using on the phone?   Tick!

It works but a lot slower than the computer of course.