There are four truly big hills on the Kokoda Challenge course: in Mudgeeraba Forest, Fairview Mountain, "Polly's" hill, and the hill at Beechmont (up through Black Shoot and down via the Hellfire Pass). So what did Team Insanity do on the weekend? Tackle two of them.
The KC summary describes the Hellfire Pass as "the steepest and longest descent of the course".
We started our morning by parking at Belliss Rd and noting that the carpark was full (although not a full as it could have been had some people learned how to park!). But off we went, walking down the dirt road that lead from the Belliss Rd checkpoint towards the Hellfire Pass, and no sooner had we reached the concrete causeway a few hundred metres along the road than we encountered our first team of the day jogging down the last part of the hill. We exchanged good morning's and turned onto the grassy trail which lead towards the hill.
It didn't take long for us to leave the nice sloping foothill and hit the "proper" hill, and it only took five to ten minutes for everyone to have removed their jackets.
Aside from a small flatter section around halfway up the hill, the Hellfire Pass is about 3 to 4 kilometres of hill. And it you're walking it in the anti-KC direction, it's all uphill. It took us a little under an hour to reach the top of the Hellfire Pass, and this was where we saw our second team for the day, once again, heading in the downhill direction. "It's busy out here this morning," they commented on the way past to which we merely nodded while trying not to look like the uphill had hurt.
After turning the corner onto Freemans Rd we understood their comment more; a few hundred metres in from of us were yet another team, this time heading in the same direction as us, along with some locals out for a walk. "Quick, let's pass them!" Brock decided, picking up speed. And so we did, about a kilometre later - after the house which looks like it was pulled from an episode of The Flintstones - as we walked past the cow paddock. A few hundred metres later we passed by yet another team heading in the other direction, and continued following the road until we came to a junction only to choose the wrong direction by reading the directions without looking at the map itself and ending up in a cul-de-sac, adding about 800m to our walk and once again putting us behind the team we'd just overtaken, and with a little under a kilometre to our destination of Syd Duncan Park, we never quite made up the gap a second time. Even with our wrong turn, it had taken 1hr 36 minutes to travel the 8.3 km between checkpoints.
Syd Duncan Park, situated on the top of a hill, overlooks the Gold Coast tourist strip and a corner of the Hinze Dam and even though it was bright and sunny it was clear that it would be cold here at night. We stayed long enough to grab food from our bags and take a few photos before heading back towards the Hellfire Pass.
Our return leg of this section means that we were travelling it in the same direction, the only differences being that we had only walked 8.3km instead of 66 to get to this point, and that it was currently the middle of the day (whereas we are expecting to be walking this section in the middle of the night). The road section is fairly uneventful as it slopes it's way up towards the top of the Hellfire Pass, and we get one more view of the coast before ending up back on the trail.
In broad daylight it's a manageable task to jog down the Hellfire Pass as long as you're careful with your footing and your knees are holding up. We're all a little sceptical of just how possible that's going to be in the middle of the night. We made it down the hill with only a few occurrences of sliding or balance issues and again got to enjoy (a word which really is a relative term on these treks) the flatter section in the middle, even if only for the smaller amount of concentration required. There was a slight moment of "anything you can do I can do better" when Shane and Brock attempted to out-sprint each other along a flat section and up an incline (I have no idea who won - I wasn't stupid enough to join in!) but we shortly encountered the remainder of the downhill and once again jogged a large portion of it, slowing back to a walk once we reached the concrete causeway at the foot of the hill. After a short stroll back to the Belliss Rd checkpoint we had completed the 7.5km return journey 1hr 13min.
We sat by the side of the road for lunch and were watched by one of the local horses (which was less threatening than last week's encounter with the magpies) and discussed where we should head for the afternoon. We had several maps with us: the Mt Nathan section which we had practiced last week; Polly's Hill and the stretch from the Environmental Centre to Syd Duncan Park. After a short dicussion we settled on Polly's Hill and headed towards Neranwood and Polly's Country Kitchen via Mudgeeraba where we got to see the start line, the Hardy's Rd turnoff (section 1) and Austinville Rd (section 3).
Again, there seemed to be a large number of vehicles parked on the side of the road, and we figured there must be other teams out on this section of the course as well. It didn't take us long to find one of them. We'd barely walked past Polly's when we crossed paths with a team heading the other way along the road. Rather than follow the part of the section which leads under the bridge and over the creek we elected to follow the road but had an excellent aerial view of where the course actually runs.
The start of the fire trail was met with the usual "Is that all there is?" comment from Brock and much muttering from me. This particular hill, similarly to the Hellfire Pass, is around 3km of almost continuous inclines, the only difference being is that the spot height of this hill was 446m as opposed to around 500m. After being passed by yet another team heading in the opposite direction (who told us that we were about halfway when in reality we had perhaps 75% of the climb to go) we made it to the top in about 45 minutes, where we encountered a pair of hikers who informed us that at least when we came back on our return journey that it would only take 20 minutes to get back down.
Shane was starting to struggle with some pain in his right knee but was happy to keep going for a little while "to see if it sorts itself out" so we started on the descent towards the Environmental Centre. We hadn't ventured very far down the hill before Shane was seeking out tree branches to use as walking sticks (although next time he should be able to try out hiking poles instead!). Around 15 minutes later we'd made it down the first part of the descent, walked over the short, flatter section, and were walking the second descent when around 2.5km out from the Environmental Centre checkpoint Shane was having enough trouble with the descent that we agreed to turn around and head back. This helped for a while, as we had to make our way back to the top of the hill, however once there (even with a very short rest break - it was unreasonably cold given that it was still only a little after 2pm) we had to descend back to the main road, and this would prove to be a slow shuffle.
Around an hour later, we made it back to the road where we stopped for a brief chat with a few people who had come down the hill behind us. Apparently there were a few cases of dehydration two years ago when it was raining (due to people being wrapped up in raincoats etc). We're all still hoping it's dry on that weekend - it's tough enough out there without having to contend with rain and mud as well (although perhaps the mud would make for an interesting sledding hill descent technique?).
Despite spending quite a bit of time on the descent of Polly's Hill, we still managed to cover around 9km in around 2hrs 18min which is still a reasonable pace overall.
We stopped in at Polly's Country Kitchen for food before heading home: lasagna, burgers, fries, soft drinks and hot chocolate. The lasagna came with a salad topped with a yellow flower as garnish, and the first thing Brock did was to eat the flower and place the stem back on the plate.
"Did you just eat that flower?" Nicole asked somewhat incredulously.
"It's edible."
"How would you know that?"
"I used to eat them all the time when I was a kid."
"Yeah," Shane said. "The neighbours probably kept an eye out. 'There's that kid that keeps eating our garden!'"
"Do you mean to say you don't ever just eat flowers?" Brock asked.
"Nooo..."
"It's a nasturtium; it's edible," Brock insisted.
"It's still a flower."
All bizarre eating habits aside, the food was good and most welcome after all the walking!
