Sam and Noah managed to ride all the way from the airport including through the sketchy tunnel and arrived at around 2:30 last night. It turned out our campsite was right underneath the flight path which started up about 5. 

But a full moon was setting above the rock above where we’d camped when we got up so the was delightful. A ranger drove past about 7 and just waved. We had breakfast and decided to wake Sam and Noah who were still managing to sleep through the flight noise about 8 with coffee (although we forgot about Sam being vegan and made him a cappuccino sachet, but I’m sure he appreciated the thought).

Another ranger came down and told us to move on about 8:30 which actually worked out to hurry us along and we rolled back onto the rail bridge just after 9.

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I think I got confused when I read people’s blogs about rail trails to Mundaring and thought it was the one through John Forrest National park. Actually we could’ve kept going from our lunch spot on a rail trail to mundaring. We would’ve missed the tunnel and falls but also missed a hill up to Mundaring town. 

Anyway, we made it and split up to faff about in town for a long time. I got a map and a coffee and some more groceries, then we went to the trailhead. A guy there told us we would want to go further than Carinyah hut but Renee had told me they only made it to Carinyah from Mundaring weir on day one. Noah was already doing bike maintenance, Sam bought his first avocado on toast from a cafe having exhausted other vegan options in Mundaring and then it was already 12pm. 

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We rode out down the trail in view of the Mundaring weir road. Maggie lost a pannier bolt but other than that we sailed down a disturbingly long hill to the weir hotel which looked very convivial but we had not done enough kms to justify a stop.

We saw our first wildflowers as we kept winding down some single track.

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We made it to the pipeline 

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and river crossing which was quite deep but we all made it through without wet feet.

After that we had to climb back out of the valley. I had been cold sitting around in Mundaring but it was hot when we were climbing out of the valley. There were very nice views though. We were out of the city entirely. 

We stopped at the top of a small rise and had a disturbing look at the map of how far we had come and how far we had to go, so we kept going despite being a bit hungry.

There has been a lot of work on the trail so it was mostly nice gentle switchbacks up to a picnic spot on a main road for some late lunch. 

I was now not at all sure that we would make the hut by nightfall. We crossed the road and continued on the slow path. Sam broke his chain but had fixed it by the time we caught up. We made a call to shortcut a bit by taking Patterson road at Pickering Brook which turned out to be a glorious downhill past some trees (walnuts?) cutting off a big corner of the trail. While eating some stolen mandarins, we made a call to shortcut another bit but it didn’t work out so well as it we had to bypass a locked quarry gate. Once back on the trail, we made it to Carinyah hut by just after 5. The hut is set in the bush and sleeps 24 which made it reasonably roomy for us 7.