Somehow I have previously bypassed this little gem, about 20km SW of
Murrayville.
The tracks to it are not shown, on the even the best map of the area. (Victorias Deserts edition 2).
We`were camped at the
well marked but little visited Coburn Pines area, we had ridden the
border track the previous day, but injuries meant 2 riders could ride no more but they were drugged up enough to come on a little side trip as passengers before
going home early.
We drove east down Coburn pines track to "Red Gums", a deserted, no facilites
camping area where we played "let down your tyres after someone un-named" had trouble on an itsy witsy
tiny
little hill, which was trying desperately to grow up so it could be called a
sand dune , and who's a lurker and so can't comment on this posts accuracy!
One of the said un-named persons tyres was at 50psi and one of the other drivers pulled out his new super-fast let down, ARB tyre deflator.
Interesting device, they un-wind and effectively pull out your valve so the air really rushes out. These ARB units are a bit fiddly and by the time it had been worked out and got operational, I had let down the other tyres with standard deflators.
Good things but a bit fiddly for me ,espically when the conditions are not ideal.
Soon we arrived at the base of
Thompson's Lookout, its an impressive sand ridge that rises 40m above the surrounding plains, its about 1km long and is in this sites named place list.
Now the map only shows a track running west-east along the base of
the ridge and effectivily bypassing it however if you keep to the right when approaching from the NW there is a
junction and a second track that rises steeply up the end of
the ridge and runs along the top to a place marker.
This is really a magnificent spot, following a good hard climb up you come out onto an exposed ridge top track with 360 degree
views.
Simply spectacular stuff, with steep drop offs on either side.
At the top, the track was flat unmarked and without wheel ruts indicating that few come here.
While everyone now had there tyres down to less than 24psi, the
hill required lower pressures and it took a while before we got everyone up.
Note - There are two other slightly easier access climbs to
the ridge at the eastern end, both also unmarked on the Vic dessert map.
We drove from the west side along the full ridge length (1km) to the eastern end of
the ridge from where you can see and access another little gem, a peak about 500m to the south with a difficult climb up to the top where there is just enough room for 2 cars.
It took negative time to consider whether we could make this climb and we approached with the big petrol in high range 1 and just pointed it skyward.
You just gotta love the feel of these cars as you feed in the torque and they just keep pulling up some of these hills unfussed.
Just the odd bit of wheel spin occurring thanks to the long thin contact patch of the 255/85/16 tyres at 16psi.
This short track section is also quite exposed with steep sides and you don't want to look sideways.
Just keep your eyes focussed on the top as the peak comes up sharply and there isn't even enough room to land a chopper on it.
It wouldn't be the first time if someone had put their
wheels over the edge.
To be honest, we play this game a bit, so we parked, cracked a diet coke and sat down to watch the 3 turbo diesels milling around below, working on strategies to come up and join us.
The first, the warmed up 4.2TDI Patrol with the big Mickey Thompson muds and 3 inch exhaust was quite surprized when he had to back down. The chipped Navara actually beat him up
after some serious airing down, practise runs and revs that would make an F1 car blush.
We did get the diesel GU up, but the non-turbo 80 series landcruiser just never was gunna make it. The owner read somewhere that slow and steady wins but soon short sheeted that idea and tried several methods before calling it quits.
This sort of sand peak, under these warm-sun conditions requires momentum which the short track just doesn't allow to be built up without power.
Fascinating though to watch the process of loss of traction.
The video footage shows the part time drive manual GXL 80 series, on its best run, coming up quite
well and you think, for a second that its going to make it.
10 meters from the top theres a slight left hand bend and slope off (sort of like up Big red but slopes the opposite, and harder way).
You can see the car lean left and take pressure off its drivers front wheel. As the pressure comes off it, the wheel begins to loose traction and spin up, throwing sand.
Drive is now being lost to the passenger front wheel and it starts to stall as the drivers front heads towards twice the spin speed of the rear
wheels.
The lost of traction on a single front wheel is enough to cause the car to stop as the still being driven rear
wheels have no hope of providing enough thrust and dig into the soft sand.
Unlike Big Red, when you stall out here and look sideways, you don't see comforting sand but just blue sky and no reference points from which to make driving judgements.
Each backdown was getting worse and closer to the edge, so, getting a bit concerned, we drove down from this wonderful un-named hilltop in Victoria's deserts and headed off before anything went wrong.
Not far away was Catus
bore, went there and then we followed Catus
bore track and others looping past the areas three other principle
camp spots (Blue Gums,Yellow Gums and Red Gums),
all were vacant despite being a saturday in the school holidays.
We heard later that the areas iconic
camp spots (Big Billy & Broken bucket) were far busier.
The trip was coming to an end, and after some really appreciated cappicino's in
Murrayville the injured riders packed up and headed for home (
Melbourne) while we wandered off to another track.
P.S. If you search for the picture in
Places please enter name as Thompson's else it won't be found.