Pausing for a moment to rest on my trekking poles like some kind of misshapen camel, I looked back up at the rocky slope before me.
Just a little more. This looked like it was the last uphill.
I struggled to the crest.
Another steep incline greeted me cheerfully.
I nearly screamed.
—
After a relaxed first day on the Great North Walk from Newcastle to Teralba, I knew Day 2 would be harder, but not the magnitude of that ‘harder-ness’. Unwilling to stop at the recommended accommodation, Watagan Forest Motel (I was here to camp, dammit!), I combined what should have been two days’-worth of walking into one, hiking about 26km from Teralba to Watagan Headquarters.
‘It’ll be a bit rough, but nothing I can’t handle,’ I thought.
What I didn’t notice was that the trail guidebook, adding weight to my pack, stated clearly an ascent/descent of 990m/610m.
So there I was, cursing whoever set this route in the first place as I slid my way up the crumbly sandstone trails through Sugarloaf Conservation Area, pushed along by my trekking poles. I assumed this was how skiers reached the top of slopes.
My gear was stuffed into an ancient and heavy backpack. I hadn’t invested in much ultra-light equipment, and it was like carrying a large wombat. I was definitely not following the rule of ‘only carry up to one-third of body weight’.
I finally began descending into Heaton Gap, galloping as best I could downhill. The trekking poles stabilised my increasingly wobbly knees.
Stumbling to the bottom, I was confronted by the reason for the name Heaton ‘Gap’ – the main road squeezes between two steep rock walls at this point. The walk guide recommends hikers stop here overnight. Constrained by the length of my annual leave, however, I couldn’t pause.
Why was I doing this? There was no big reason. It wasn’t for a fundraiser, or a Fastest Known Time.
I guess I just wanted to prove that I could do it.
Recently, side effects of overworking a hypermobile body have started to become more apparent. I sleep with a body pillow, otherwise my hips and shoulders collapse in on each other and I can’t move my neck fully for days afterwards. On this hike, with no space for such an object, I padded my waist and neck at night with clothes stuffed into my mattress and camping quilt sacks.
Walkers taking advantage of the Easter long weekend greeted me. Everyone was walking the opposite way, downwards, and everyone only had day packs. I alone was The Idiot.
One walker chatted to me for a few minutes about the hiking forums he frequented online, reading other people’s experiences on the Great North Walk.
“I’ll do it one day,” he said wistfully. “I just don’t have the time right now.”
That’s why I’m doing this now, buddy. Life is so busy. So if not now, then when?
I slogged on, heart hammering, pain shooting through my neck and shoulders. Hypermobility often comes with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). Blood pressure drops instead of rising to meet increased demands on the body, such as climbing, or even simply standing up. Vision goes black, little sparkles pop and it takes a minute to slowly clear. Compensating for this drop in blood pressure, the heart pumps furiously.
I crawled upwards, occasionally putting my trekking poles aside and simply using my hands.
Surely it will level out over the next crest. If I just keep going, my patience will pay off and a lovely flat trail will appear.
And over the next crest was another crest.
Throwing a tantrum right there and then seemed both an amusing prospect and a legitimate response. There was no one to see me anyway, except a land mullet and some wattlebirds.
Nothing but the need for a flat place to camp was driving me forward. When the ground finally began to flatten out, I was still 2.5km from camp, and dusk was falling fast.
Then I saw it, a little sign pointing up a side trail. ‘Bushrat Campsite’ was only a few hundred metres away. An unmapped campsite.
I didn’t even have enough energy to get excited by this miracle. I simply veered off the main trail, hauled myself uphill, and collapsed in a tiny clearing, empty aside from the remains of an old campfire.
Somehow, I set up the bivvy, crawled inside, and played dead for twelve hours.
I woke early the next morning, in pale coolness, the world amazingly still. With a hot cup of tea in my hand, and a dawn chorus of birds signalling that all of us had made it safely through the night, I was glad to be here.
But I never wanted to make those climbs again.

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