OG

It has now been quite some time since I’ve been making Blueprint’s Nutty Pudding. For future reference, in case the Blueprint site stops showing recipes, here is the OG:

• 50-100 mL Macadamia Nut Milk
• 3 Tbsp ground macadamia nuts
• 2 tsp of ground walnuts
• 2 Tbsp chia seeds
• 1 tsp of ground flaxseed (seed that is ground into flour)
• 1/4 brazil nut
• 6 grams of Blueprint cocoa
• 1 tsp sunflower lecithin
• 1/2 tsp ceylon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup blueberries/raspberries/strawberries (your choice)
• 3 cherries
• 2 oz pomegranate juice

My Tweaks

Some of these items are a little hard to get in Australia, or have (in my opinion) below average value-to-benefit ratios, and I’ve decided to swap them out. Instead, this is the recipe I am currently (19-03-2025) using:

• 30g whole macadamia nuts
• 15g whole walnuts
• 2 Tbsp chia seeds
• 1 tsp whole linseed/flaxseed
• 1/4 brazil nut
• 1 Tbsp cacao powder (that’s CACAO, not COCOA)
• 1 tsp sunflower or soy lecithin granules
• 1/2 tsp ceylon cinnamon
• 1/2 - 1 cup frozen mixed berries
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• 500mg TMG powder
• 1 Tbsp HCP
• 1 scoop (25g) pea protein powder
• 2 Tbsp wheat germ
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp of creatine

Almost all of this is just from Woolies or Coles, but I did buy the TMG from iHerb, the Creatine from Bulk Nutrients, and the cacao powder and ceylon cinnamon from from Amazon. Here is my justification for the adjustments.

1. I’ve used whole nuts instead of ground, as my blender (Vitamix) does a perfectly adequate job of grinding everything up. Anecdotally, I believe that ground nuts spoil more quickly than whole nutes.
2. I’ve swapped out cocoa powder for cacao powder, and it is less processed. It should have higher antioxidants, more nutrients, and fewer additives.
3. I’m experimenting swapping out the sunflower lecithin with soy lecithin granules. It is my understanding that there are two reasons for including lecithin in Nutty Pudding: firstly, because it adds choline, and secondly, because it improves the texture. Choline probably isn’t a challenge for people consuming a lot of meat or dairy, but consider I tend to avoid both, there is the chance that I need more. Of course, choline combined with meat consumption can be problematic, apparently. So, why soy lecithin? Simply because it is easier to get in Australia, cheaper, and has a higher amount of choline.
4. I’ve taken out the pomegranate juice because it is expensive, and the research seemed limited when it came to benefits.
5. I’ve added mustard seeds to boost sulforaphane, which is an antioxidant. Given I cook almost all my vegetables, it is my understanding that this diminishes the sulforaphane content of them. This is from How Not To Age.
6. I’ve added TMG to help with methylation and reduce homocysteine.
7. Wheat germ is for spermidine, which is a compound linked to autophagy. This is from How Not To Age.
8. Turmeric is for it’s active component curcumin, which is anti-inflammatory. This is from How Not To Age.
9. Creatine is to increase ATP production and hopefully allow me to build muscle faster. Apparently there are also some studies indicating it may be helpful to push back Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
10. Removed Macadamia Nut Milk, as I just use water. Macadamia Nut Milk is expensive in Australia.
11. HCP for skin health, muscle recovery (glycine) and joint/bone support. I’m on the fence if there is enough evidence to show efficacy here.
12. Pea Protein Powder to slightly up my protein intake. I’m currently 77kg and aim for around 125g per day, but don’t track macros anymore. As we know, protein is a double edged sword: on one side we build muscle to fend off sarcopenia, an on the other side we activate MTOR which inhibits autophagy.

Prep and Storage

I prepare about 15 days worth of dry powders ahead of time. I typically add some water in the blender and put the dry powders in, and then go on a run. My hypothesis here is that this helps with bioavailability, even though the blender chops things up perfectly fine. After my run I dump the frozen mixed berries in, and have a shower. After my shower I finally blend it all up, and enjoy!

I started this website 20 years ago as a means to learn Django, which made sense, as at the time I wished to do everything myself: website and hosting, running my own mail server, dns server, and probably something else, too. Over time my desire to spend time on these activities dwindled, and I move my content to blogger.

Year by year I wrote fewer articles, and then it became years since I wrote anything. Perhaps it was the UI for blogger or the niggling feeling that Google could kill it off at any time, or perhaps it was having a kid. Eventually the libraries were no longer maintained. This weekend I opted to:

• Remove as many libraries as possible
• Move from Blogger to Github Pages

Intially I gave Jekyll a go, as GH Pages natively supports it, but Jekyll seems to be on its way out as a static site generator (e.g. the pagenate plugin hasn’t been updated in like 7 years, and you can’t natively use other plugsin in Github). I gave Hugo a go, and it worked incredibly well.

Here is an overview of what I had to do:

• Read this page and follow almost all of the steps.
• Created this script to download the full size images from Blogger. Run it with python src/download_images.py after installing by pip install requests. I had about 250MB of images, so beware if you have a lot, at Pages has a limit of 1GB storage.
• Created this script to replace any remaining links to picasaweb or blogger with just the image name located next to it. You might not need to run this.
• Leveraged a lot of concepts from the PaperMod theme, but kept the theme as close to my original theme as possible.
• If you want to use an apex (’naked’) domain, then you need to use the entire Github Pages domain as your entire repo name. For example, username.github.io, or see here for an example
• Added a custom domain, which I found the documentation to be a bit out of date. From what I remember just point the apex domain to Github’s IPs, and use a CNAME for the www subdomain.

Github IPs

• 185.199.108.153
• 185.199.109.153
• 185.199.110.153
• 185.199.111.153

Updating DNS records

Background

A few years ago, probably in late 2022, I was doing some self-reflection and was pondering what the next constraint was for improving my health. Depending on whom you ask, there are generally several areas of focus when it comes to health:

1. Exercise
2. Nutrition
3. Metabolic health
4. Sleep
5. Testing or screenings
6. Supplementation or pharmacological interventions

The conclusion I reached after some reflection was that nutrition was the next area for me to focus on. My approach has typically been to deep dive on reading books, and since then I’ve read the following books related to nutrition and longevity:

• Longevity Diet
• Outlive
• How Not To Age
• Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy
• The Art of Lifting
• The Science of Lifting
• And I’m currently reading the Longevity Leap.

In addition to books I also found a few channels on YouTube that I generally thought were evidence based and produced well, with Plant Chompers / Viva Longevity! and Physionic being some of my favourite.

Fast forward to this morning, when I was outside eating breakfast (sunshine exposure!) and I thought it might be worthwhile to do a yearly reflection of each year. Perhaps this is just me being influenced by reading No More Gold Stars!

Without further delay, let’s get going on my inaugural State of Health series!

Exercise

My main form of cardio is running, so let’s start there. You can clearly see when I went on holiday (December), as it was really challenging to be able to find time / fresh air to run.

My total distance for 2024 was 2759km over 417 hours, which is about 8 hours of cardio on average per week. This seems to be under the threshold limit of the “cardio j-curve of CVD” that I read about a number of years ago.

I did less hiking in 2024 than in 2023, which I hope to rectify in 2025.

In addition to cardio I’ve been trying to increase the amount of time I spend resistance training, so that became more of a focus after both my first DEXA scan as well as reading the Science of Lifting.

I think I will continue with adopting an approach of progressive overload and focussing on total volume, with a mixture of intensities focussing on both hypertrophy and strength.

Nutrition

My diet continues to be whole foods plant based, but with exceptions when travelling; if needed I’ll have some chicken, fish, or eggs.

Super Veggie

Fishbowl (when I need to eat out)

Nutty Pudding

How do we track how well nutrition is working? For now, let’s just look at my weight.

I was previously using a Withings scale, and apparently it didn’t sync correctly, but the new Garmin one does. From what I can tell my weight has been fairly consistent for the H2 of the year, but with a drop in December due to travel. My typical meal looks like this:

Breakfast (about 6am): thins with ABC nut butter and banana and cinnamon

Snack (about 8am): Nutty Pudding, but with mustard seeds and turmeric.

Lunch: Super Veggie, w/Kimchee

Dinner: Something from The How Not To Die Cookbook

The DEXA scan I did in the beginning of 2024 had me at 18.5% body fat, so it will be interesting to see what I’m at in my next scan. 

Sleep

Sleep became much more of a focus in 2024 after reading Why We Sleep in Sep 2023.

However, my sleep in in 2024 was less consistent than in 2023, unfortunately. My average “Sleep Score” was an 82 in both 2023 and 2024, yet 2023 saw a Standard Deviation of 3.0 while 2024 saw 5.2. This is quite ironic, as I was much more aware of my sleep in 2024, but I believe due almost entirely due to work related stress.

In 2023 my average duration was 7hr 33m, and in 2024 it was 7hr 28m.  However, my average bed time decreased from 10:25PM to 10:10PM.

I continue to wear ear plugs when I sleep, and try to sleep in a separate bed from anyone whenever possible. For 2025 this will be a focus, and it would be ideal if I could routinely get in the 90+ sleep score space.

Supplementation

While many people are comfortable taking 100s of supplements, I have been trying to stick to what is on the ITP website for supported interventions. For most of 2024 I took the following supplements:

• Collagen 15g 
• Trimethylglycine (TMG) 500mg
• Niacin 50mg
• Vitamin K2 MK-7 90µg
• Zinc 8.25mg
• Creatine 5g
• Omega 3

I also tried taking Boron to lower my SHBP levels, but I believe it negatively impacts my sleep.

Results

Here is a snapshot of my biomarkers.

I also track my biomarkers in Carrot Care, and the main areas of focus for 2025 will be:

• Continuing to lower my LDL
• Keeping my ApoB low
• Re-testing IGF-1
• Re-testing my progesterone levels (potentially low due to stress at time of previous test)
• Exploring if I should lower my SHBG

Unfortunately I don’t think there’s much I can do about Lp(a).

Let’s look at Stress.

2024 was certainly more stressful than 2023, which was itself generally more stressful than 2022 - all due to changing roles at work. My stress levels in June/July were elevated due to work, in September due to running a marathon and then immediately catching Covid, and finally in December due to several overnight flights and some work deadlines that required significant overtime.

I would like to aim to get routinely under 25 if possible.

My resting heart rate hovered around 50-51 for the year, and ultimately I would like to try and get this below 50.

Experiments

• Convert garmin’s intensity minutes to MET, so can compare to papers
• TBC

I have the privilege of being able to afford all those random little backpacking items, and while I don’t baby my gear, I do try to take care of it. Especially things that keep me safe. Here’s what I do after every trip with a few of the items.

I have what are probably the two most popular water filters on the market: the Katadyn BeFree and Sawyer Squeeze. The point of this article isn’t about comparing filters, but I recommend both: I use the BeFree for solo day hikes / fastpacking or if water is plentiful, and the Squeeze in pretty much every other situation (e.g. if I need to filter for other people). If buying now then I would be super keen to try out the Platypus QuickDraw.

This previous weekend I came back from a quick overnight with some people and kids, so decided to take photos of the clean-up process.

Sawyer Squeeze

I prefer doing a backflush with the coupling unit vs. the syringe.

Get supplies ready. Bleach, spare Sawyer bag, and blue coupling thing.

Fill bag with water, add one cupful of bleach.

Put on blue coupling thing, but only about 1/2 way

Put Squeeze on and now make it tight.

Backflush. I don’t do it like this, and use two hands instead, but had to take a photo.

Put cap back on and pour a little of the water in the filter. Let sit for a few hours.

CNOC Bladder

I use this as a dirty bag if needing to filter a lot of water (e.g. group trip).

Fill bladder with water and a capful of bleach.

Put on counter and let sit for a few hours. I then put a small cup in the opening and let stand dry.

20 year old Platypus bladders stay in the freezer. Mainly used for running if I don’t take my BeFree.

Gas Canister

I use my kitchen scale to weigh and then write down how much gas is left. This one started at 203g, and after a few overnights is 110g. Commonly these canisters weight 95g - 100g when empty, so I know I’ve got 1-2 burns remaining.

Weight on the side (~200g gross weight, 95-100g empty weight)

That’s it. When done these all go in my “every trip” basket (to be fair, I don’t take a stove quite often), and now I know I don’t get caught out with a clogged filter or run out of fuel and drink cold coffee.

Where: Katoomba to Mittagong (via Hill Top for reasons below)

When: 2020/12/27 18:00 to 2020/12/30 morning

Distance: 131km, with maybe 30 km of buckwhacking (details below).

Conditions: Day 2 was pretty weird, as it started quite hot, probably around 27C, and then it just opened up and poured. Forecasted to unload 20mm, and I think that felt about right.

Useful Pre-Trip Information or Overview: I found a few GPX tracks and added a several backup tracks in Gaia GPS, but opted to follow the boring “quicker” route. I think the GPX I used was not one that had been recorded, but just one that had been created. This was one of the planning mishaps for my adventure: I overestimated possible pace. The GPX had 5km/hr average. I read previous trip reviews of people saying they could jog the track. It quickly became apparent there was no way anybody would be able to do parts of the track that quickly, so either I went a different way, the track got more difficult, or I haven’t mastered bushwhacking.

A few other prerequisites: I checked that the parks I needed to cross weren’t closed, checked the Cox’s River water gauge at Kelpie Point (0.29m), as well as potential water sources. The most challenging water situation would be on Scotts Main Range, and sure enough, I had to use the water pits, which were pretty dirty. David Noble’s site quoted the walk in the Nattai Valley as “mostly this is easy walking on the riverflats”… more on that later.

My goal was to do it in about 2 1/2 days, but with a backup plan to stay one more night, and/or bail via Hill Top.

The Report: I will try to be concise, but include information if anybody else wishes to do this hike. Considering I think some of the parks only opened quite recently, it doesn’t look like anybody has done this track in quite some time. The conditions I encountered were vastly different from the trip reports I have read previously.

Day 0 (21km)

At 17:30 I got off the train and took a cab to Narrowneck Carpark & Gate ($20), and started that long boring walk along Narrowneck. Tarros Ladder has some metal holds, so is pretty easy if you have a light pack and have done some rock climbing, but probably need to be careful if you have a heavy pack. Then over Tarros Ladder Medlow Gap Walking Track, which is now pretty overgrown, and I think next time I would just continue taking the road, but maybe that’s because I was night hiking. Finally, Medlow gap down through White Dog Ridge Firetrail to Kelpie Point Trail, then camped just before Cox’s River.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/4536566086

Photos: https://imgur.com/a/Q6Fl4fR


Looking Fresh

View from Narrowneck

More Narrowneck

View back towards Katoomba

Pretty easy climb

Day 1 (42km)

The day started off on the wrong foot, as I decided to walk the Cox’s River before heading up to Mount Cookem. I contemplate in hindsight if I should have gone back up Kelpie Point Trail and come down and crossed Cox’s River a bit downstream, but the walk along the river only took 40 minutes. The problem is that this type of bushwhacking - waist height to above my head - is pretty draining. Additionally, I’m not certain if I could have crossed downstream after the Cox merged with the Kowmung River, as when I tried, the water was quickly above my waist. Eventually, I first crossed the Cox then crossed the Kowmung, then started up to Mount Cookem. I think I came up the the wrong hill, as I had to do a few pretty gnarly rock climbs. Eventually I popped out and hit Scotts Main Range.

Then a long long fireroad walk. The water wells had water, but they quickly clogged my BeFree. Overall just hot and sort of boring, but the most annoying thing was these big flies that would bite me whenever I stopped. They even managed to bite though my clothing.

I started to just wish for something different, and then a downpour started. Probably 3-4 hours of rain, and everything started flooding. No longer was it a problem finding water, as there were now streams forming in the road. The slightly scary part was that there was lightning hitting pretty close, which I didn’t like.

Eventually I managed to come down through Byrnes Gap, and camped between there and Yerranderie, which was my goal for the day. I probably could have gone further, but the rain was starting to get tiring, and I had a big blister forming (more details in the gear review below).

Remember to look out for dead branches before camping, especially after all the fires.

9hr 19min moving time, but 11hr elapsed time, and at 13:11/km pace (inc the bushwhack and hike up to Cookem).

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/4536592392

Photos: https://imgur.com/a/rvIcBkX

Not looking quite as fresh

Too deep to cross, and need to climb up that mountain next

Much easier when out of the bush, but still pretty steep

That’s where I came from

I think that green area is where I camped

At least it isn’t raining

Day 2 (47km)

And here is where things start to really deviate from previous trip reports. The walk from Yerranderie to Wollondilly River was as per spec, except for needing to continue down Sheepwalk Track instead of my planned Roses Track, as it was closed to walkers. My heart sunk a bit when reaching Murrphys Crossing and seeing how big the river was - I was pretty certain there was going to be a need to swim across it, and it was flowing quickly. I sent a message on my inReach, and walked downstream to see if there were any branches and logs that I could get trapped in if I did get swept off my feet. I then started across, and luckily the water never went above my waist. There was good footing the entire way. Looking up the river was beautiful.

Some more fireroad later and a sign pointed in to the bush reading “Mount Beloon”. There was a faint trail, and a pretty easy initial “off track” experience, at least compared to bashing bush that’s as tall as I am. Soon the waist height bushes returned, and this time on the steep hill. At some point the track intersects the cliffs around Mount Beloon, and I thought “faaaaa I could maybe climb this, but in the rain this is going to be sketchy”. Keep looking around and eventually there will be an easier section that requires NO CLIMBING.

Coming down the other side I was excited to be going downhill, but the bush was now quite thick. Soon it dipped in to a dried up creek, which was a little faster to walk through. Continue down the gully, but be ready for a lot of scrambling. I’m not certain if the gully has always been like this, but I think it might have had a few landslides last year: trees and boulders were everywhere. It took about 90 minutes to get to the Nattai River.

One source stated in 2015 that “it was really interesting to see the wheels of time grinding down on the Nattai ‘Road’. Once upon a time it would have been used by 4WD, but now it is completely overgrown and impassable to anything and everyone who isn’t hiking.” Well, I couldn’t even find the road, despite looking, and I had offline maps and GPS. Looking down the Nattai, with no track or easy walking ahead, it was at this point that I knew I likely wouldn’t make it back as per plan.

I reached for my inReach and sent the preset “All is well, but behind schedule”.

Previous reports seem to indicate that the river bed is easy to walk along, but it might be necessary to cross the river a few times. Well, let me tell you, there were usually only two options: bash some very thick bush, or just walk up above-knee deep water. And to make matters worse, a lot of the sand was very damp, so I frequently would take a step and posthole knee deep in the sand. This postholing would sometimes go on for over 50 metres, and was very slow going.

The sun set and I was now hiking by headlamp, but with absolutely no suitable campsites visible, I was getting a little worried. Finally a small patch appeared, and I pulled out my gear and went to bed.

11hr 41min of moving time, but 14hr 55min elapsed time

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/4536901043

Photos: https://imgur.com/a/L2Sf7UJ

That’s where I slept

That way!

Under maintenance

Yerranderie (Under maintenance this week)

Nope, not going to go that way

Spirits still high

Beautiful remote views. Lots of roos and emus

One of my favourite stretches of road

May be subject to flooding. You don’t say.

Survived.

Easy off track

That’s a problem

Made it

Only took 90 minutes to get down the gully, but a lot of effort

Nattai river

Bush whacking time

Day 3 (21km)

By 6am I was already packed and continuing down the Nattai, yet slowness persisted - maybe 18:00/km. Troys Creek Track was supposed to come out via Troys Creek, but I couldn’t find any sign of a track. Next I came across Emmetts Flat and started up the creek, but there was no evidence of human activity. And then I saw a cairn. Just two stones, but hard to miss. My spirits have never been lifted so much.

I found Starlights Trail, and was elated. I bounded up to Point Hill where I had the first mobile phone receptions since leaving Narrowneck, and out to Wattle Ridge. By now it was about 9:30am. The next challenge was how to get to Mittagong Station. I checked Uber (reported about $50), but no cars available. Then I checked 13cabs, but outside coverage. Because I arrived in the morning everybody in the carpark was coming in to the park, and not going out. I started to walk. I ended up walking almost the entire way to Hill Top, and not a single car passed me. Then one white SUV came, I tried to get a ride, but they carried on. Fair enough. A second car came, and they slowed down and picked me up! “Yea, I can drop you off at Mittagong, I’m going that way”. Thank you Jason - lifesaver!

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/4536954800

Photos: https://imgur.com/a/Ul2yLJ7

That’s not a real trail - wombat tracks.

CIVILISATION!!!!

MORE CIVILISATION!!!

No longer see through

Gear malfunction

Gear Notes: I didn’t do a lighterpack, but everything I had was in an 18L running vest. Basically just a sleeping bag, pad, shelter, food, and rain jacket. It was probably close to SUL, but I knew the weather was going to likely turn wicked and I was going to be in the middle of nowhere; I didn’t want to go stupid light.

Gear Experiments: There were two pieces of gear I wished to test on this adventure. The first was a Sunday Afternoons hat, as I figured the ridge walking in the sun wouldn’t be enjoyable with just a trucker hat. This was the right call. It worked great. The next test was a pair of white running tights. I’m trying better to use clothing as sun protection, and the tights worked well. I quickly started to wear just the tights, and they breathed fairly well, and had no chafing. They also proved decent protection from bushes. In fact, the only cuts I got where between my socks and the tights; my shins got quite torn up. No sunburns. They weren’t white when I finished.

Gear That Didn’t Work Well: I had several gear malfunctions. The first was my Altra Lone Peak shoes, as I started to get a pretty big blister on my right foot. I thought this was because the shoe was a little too loose, so I tightened it right up. Then I had the skin rub off on the top of my foot. A little leukotape and that problem was solved, but the blister persisted. I rarely got blisters in my Lone Peaks, but had been getting them in the same place for some reason recently, so I pre-taped my foot before heading out. Yes, that’s right, I was getting a blister under tape. Suddenly I realised what was causing the blister: the insole was sliding backwards, which was then putting pressure on my heel. I simply removed the insole, and no more rubbing! Then my right shoe developed a massive hole, which is maybe to be expected, as they have close to (at least) 700km. Finally, I developed life-ending holes in both my Drymax and Injinji socks; the heel of one, the toes of the other. (And I keep my toenails extremely filed down, as per “Fixing Your Feet”).

What would I do differently next time? I would like to avoid Scotts Main Range, and somehow cut up on a parallel track on the other side of the Kowmung River. And then obviously figure out how to get down the Nattai a bit more easily. Alternatively, if I could get my fitness up, and the weather would allow me to go a little bit lighter, I would enjoy being able to run more of the roads. Because of the forecasted weather I had to carry a little bit too much stuff, and the blister was pretty big, or maybe these are the excuses I was telling myself.

Please don’t hesitate reaching out if you wish to do this track and have any questions. This track could be really fun with a group of people without any hard deadlines. This trip report was also cross-posted on r/UltralightAus here: https://www.reddit.com/r/UltralightAus/comments/kox0u9/trip_report_katoomba_to_mittagong_131km/

 Read below for a long list of warnings. After reading some of the comments below, e.g. from Des, it seems like the track can vary significantly depending on when you do it.

TL;DR - in winter, after bush fires and floods, this track is a 7/6. Left Katoomba Railway Station at about 10:00am on a Saturday in early August, so I guess technically still winter. I packed quite light and intended to do this in two days, and hopefully even get back to Sydney by 5pm. I had all the topological maps offline in Gaia GPS, and created a route based on the maps in Wildwalks; I couldn’t find a GPS trace. For the record: not a single time did I ever feel lost. It is very simple from a navigation perspective: keep Cox river to right. Walk in Breakfast Creek until it forks to Carlons Creek - go left. Now, go up. And up. Here are my notes and where things got slow. Six Foot Track - beautiful and very, very easy. First 11km (starting at Katoomba station) average pace was around ~10:15/km. The next 7km was a tad bit slower, maybe around 12:00/km.

Easy Six Foot Track. Beautiful weather.

For whatever reason I crossed the bridge. Too enticing, maybe. The river at the bridge was raging. 1km or so later tried to cross the river and almost immediately was at waist level. Flipped around and back to bridge. My first thought was “this is going to make the two river crossings later a bit interesting”.

I should have known better

The track disappeared almost immediately and it was bushwhacking time. What I learned later is that it should be easier to walk this section, as the river is actually like… crossable. My pace slowed to 20:00/km for a few km, then up to 14:00 for a few km. Right where the track crossed the river things got tough. I slowed to 17:00/km, then further up to almost 25:00/km. More than once I was on all fours pushing my bag through whatever track was made by wombats, or having to rock climb across the near vertical boulders a few meters above the river. The thought of crossing the river would be insane. I made it to Breakfast Creek well after dark after 7pm. Moving time was 8:27m, but I don’t remember stopping besides filtering water and crawling on the ground…

Water all the way up to slippery rocks

Yep, just head on in to the bushes

And you end up with pricklies like this

Then you can climb down this little cliff

Or scoot across this one.
If you slip off, then you’ll float downstream in the river…

The next morning I set off after the sun came up, so starting at about 6:45am. I guess because of the big floods earlier in the year the track had washed away, as probably 75% of the time I was just rock skipping. Not a big deal, and a little hard on the ankles, but waaaay easier than the day before. Eventually hit Dunphry’s campground, and thought things would be all done. Wrong.

Sometimes there was a trail, and it was awesome

But 75% of the time this is what the “trail” looked like

Or this

I knew from the topo maps the climb up to Carlon’s Head would be steep, and it was. And no track. Walked too far to the left and missed the little chain going up. Eventually found it, and went up one. Then another. Then another. The old historic bolts seems to have been partially replaced by newer ones. I climbed a fair bit over the last few years, so it wasn’t too big of a deal, but know that if you’ve never done rock climbing, and you have a heavy pack, this would be terrifying. And it is high enough to potentially be deadly if you fall.

Go up here. This was the easiest of the climbs.

Progress

On top of the ridge, sweet! Now everything is all flat and I’m golden! Not quite. The forest fires from December took out every trace of the track. More bushwhacking, this time in burnt out forest, for two more km. Average pace was 15:30/km.

Just walk through it. No trail. Careful to not kill any new plants growing up.

Finally back out of the burnt woods and on to 10km of fire road. Easy. Average pace probably 10:30/km. I made it back to the train station by 13:15, with just enough time to get a coffee and catch the train home. Total distance: about 65km. Total elapsed time: ~15.5hr. Total moving time: 14hr This track would have been much easier had the river not been overflowing, or had the creeks not flooded in Jan, or had the fires not raged in December. If you are thinking about doing this, then I would absolutely recommend a few things: * Have as light of a pack as you can take. I wouldn’t have been able to climb Carlon’s Head with a 15kg pack * If trying in winter, of course bring a headlamp * Create the route and make sure to have topo maps. Again, I never felt lost * I hike in shorts almost always. If doing this again with the same challenges, I’d probably wear pants. * Bring a PLB or InReach, as there’s no apparent service from Six Foot all the way until you hit Dunphyrs. This would have been beautiful if the track existed. If you want to have a look at my maps, then check out these activities on Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/3918994803 https://www.strava.com/activities/3919253337 Hike on!

In about 2001 or 2002 I read a book called “Beyond Backpacking - Ray Jardine’s Guide to Lightweight Hiking”, which set me on a path to being as light as possible. It came in very handy when I did my first section hike of the PCT, about 7 days, and I vaguely remember a total pack weight of about 25 lbs - with 4 litres of water. I was a broke college student then, so I guess clipping toothbrushes and straps really paid off. I also used a weird mesh hammock thing and I think a tarp of some kind. I have been “ultralight” ever since, even when renting equipment in Patagonia.

Anyways, the mindset has stuck 20 years later. I now am fortunate enough to have more funds to purchase better equipment, but always keen to read about recommendations on how to have a better experience and maybe even save a little weight.

Recently a series of videos was pasted on YouTube that touched on food, and they were terrific. I had always been pretty good about choosing which food to take. Here in Australia, my general rule of thumb was to try and get something as close to 2000kJ per 100g as possible, and then 4 or 5 stars. This insured I was getting calorie dense food, but with the videos mentioned above, I think I can now get the right calories.

I am pasting my notes below as reference purely for myself, although I might come back around and paste suitable options from Woolies or Coles that are suitable. If you have an hour or two, and like backpacking, then I really encourage you to have a watch.

Breakfast

Mixture of simple (high GI) and complex (low GI) carbs. Simple carbs hand off to complex carbs hand off to fats.

Ideal ratio for breakfast:

• 65% calories from fat
• 28% from carbs, ideally split complex/simple, maybe leaning to simple
• 7% from protein

Trail Food

Probably want something in the 5% - 15% calories from sugar range, unless eating smaller portions more often, and then 15% - 25%.

Ideal ratio for the trail:

• 65% calories from fat
• 28% from carbs, ideally split complex/simple, maybe leaning to complex
• 7% from protein

Recovery

• Drink mix consumed within 15 minutes of finishing for the day.
• Ideally a carb/protein ratio between 3:1 and 4:1. 
• Avoid fat. 
• Glucose and fructose around 3:1. 
• Frog fuel (collagen) or hydrolysed whey isolate.

Dinner

Between 20 - 30g of high quality protein, the rest of calories rich in fat, and as close to bed time as possible for thermogenic effect.

Electrolytes

A few key bullet points on usage of electrolytes:

Three states of dehydration:

• hypertonic: water loss is greater in comparison to sodium loss, so serum sodium concentration increases
• hypotonic: water loss is accompanied by excessive sodium loss, so serum sodium concentration decreases
• isotonic: water and sodium are lost at the same rate

More notes:

• Hypernatremia is a result of dehydration.
• Hyponatremia is not a result of dehydration, but a result of treatment of dehydration with fluids that do not contain enough sodium.
• Hiking for 8.5 hours @ 435mg Na/hr = 3600mg lost sodium

Expected losl per hour:

• Na 300 - 500
• K 100 - 160
• Mg 40 - 60
• Ca 20 - 30

More notes:

• Reminder that to monitor water intake, urine frequency and colour is the way to go.
• Condition most likely to encounter on the trail is “exercise-associated hyponatremia”, aka drinking plenty of fluids, but not enough electrolytes. One symptom of hyponatremia is swelling, in particular in hands and feet. Ring is a sensitive instrument… “snug fit, time to start taking on electrolytes with water. Loosey goosey? No need to supplement beyond what already get from trail snacks.”

Lots of sodium - 4,500mg would be for long days hiking in the heat

In Practice

Here is a follow-up comment on what that might look like in practice:

Breakfast - a 2-serving Backpacker’s Pantry Granola, 1240 Cal, 34g protein

Trail Snacks - your average Kind bar ranks as Light or Very Light, runs close to a 4:1 ratio and has an average 5g protein per 200 Cal, extrapolate for 1000 Cal of same or similar to get another 25g protein

Recovery Shake - Gatorade Recover packet and a Starbucks Via, gives the right ratio for 370 Cal and 21g protein

Dinner - Mountain House Chicken & Dumplings 2-serving pouch, 600 Cal and 33g protein

There are a lot of books on parenting. Before my daughter was born I read a book on pregnancy, one of those 500 pages texts from a high class place - Mayo Clinic or Harvard or something like that. It was helpful, but given I can’t even remember the name, clearly not something that I considered life changing.

However, after reading Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain I was all hyped up to drown my new kid in words. We travelled a lot when she was young, so didn’t have a lot of books, but she sure had them read to her. When I took a year off as a stay-at-home-dad I kept having those 30 million words ticking in my mind. By the time she was 2 1/2 she was getting five books read to her a night. By the time she was around 3 1/2 she was listening to Amazon Story Time for an hour every evening.

Also around 3 she started playing Khan Kids, and could play it for ages if I let her. There was no doubt that she enjoyed learning, and it was lovely to see her take each new step.

She entered Kindy when she was about 4 1/2, so one of the younger kids. Her school was teaching them how to read by having them sound out words, look for clues, but also to just brute force a few 100 of the most frequently used words. These were called “sight words”, and knowing them supposedly speeds up their comprehension for easier texts, which left more energy for the words they didn’t know. Sounds good to me.

Without getting into too much detail, the first part of the year was quite challenging for us. At one point I realised I wasn’t really helping her as much with her school work as I could have, and while she certainly wasn’t falling behind, I also knew she had extra potential that wasn’t being explored.

Given all this background, I started to take her sight words seriously. I bought a laminator and made her little flash cards, and put in place some low-fi spaced repetition, so she wouldn’t need to go over 100s of easy words every day. This meant we could go over the “known” words on the weekend, and the less well known words over breakfast.

The system works like this: a new sheet gets made and we play a little game where a subset of the cards gets put on the table, and I shout out a word. She finds the word, and we put it in the “learn” bag. Sometimes she knows it, and sometimes needs to sound it out.

Learning New Words

This is pretty easy for her, for example, if I say “give” then she knows only one word starts with a “g”, so chooses that. After doing this a few times we then go through the “learn” bag like normal flash words: I show the word, and let her say it back to me. If she gets it right a few times and clearly has instant recall, then it goes in the “young” bag.

Getting Mastery

After she gets it right a few more times, then the card goes in the “mature” bag.

We do the “learn” bag every breakfast, and the “young” bag every few breakfasts. We do the “mature” bag usually on the weekend or on a Monday morning. If she gets a word wrong, then it goes the other way (e.g. from “mature” back in to “young” or directly to “learn” again).

I am really impressed with her school, as most of the kids in kindergarten seem like they can read. Although some of the kids know more sight words than her that’s not the point; she has an easier time reading, and I sometimes hear her reading to herself in her room.

One thing to note is that she gets no rewards for doing her sight words, but there are almost never any complaints. However, we do have an agreement that when she can read a “level 5” book, which I think is about a grade 4 book, then I will buy her a copy of Harry Potter and we will each read a copy. I can’t wait!

Background

I have two first aid kits: one that is in my bag when I go to work, and another when I go hiking. The one in my bag has more stuff in it, but overall the contents are pretty similar. In particular with the hiking kit I am only carrying what is likely to be used, items that cannot be improvised with what I can find, and items that I know how to use. It would be easy to pack my fears and include a tourniquet or triangle bandage or EpiPen, but if I allowed myself to fear that level of risk I would also wear a helmet while walking across crosswalks. The reality is I am much more likely to get blisters, minor cuts, and lots of sore muscles.

Drugs

So, what’s it in my kit? Let’s start with the drugs.

Lots of drugs

Pretty standard set of drugs I think. Here’s why I have each in my kit:

• Paracetamol: normal headaches
• Ibuprofen aka Vitamin I: aches and pains
• Paracetamol + Ibuprofen: really bad headaches or pain
• Telfast: itchies, but mainly for other people
• Aspirin: heart attacks, but mainly for other people (very unlikely, but also weights nothing)
• Gastro-stop: self-explanatory

You will notice that I keep these in little coin bags with dosage and expiry. I have noticed people previously hiking with full bottles of each of these.

Other Stuff

Let’s move on to the other stuff.

All the other stuff

And to walk through this stuff left to right:

• Tiny Westcott titanium sewing scissors with a set of tweezer wrapped in Velcro. Lighter than the smallest Swiss army knife, and more function on both items I might use. Tweezers are for both splinters and ticks.
• Two sewing needles with some thread. Need better storage mechanism.
• Some band-aids
• Lots of Leukotape
• Patch for inflatable
• Patch for puffy or tent
• One gauze pad
• One Antibiotic gel
• Some alcohol wipes
• One antiseptic wipes

I am always open to suggestions, but at this point I am not certain what else I would carry. I am contemplating getting rid of the gel/wipes, as I have never used them. The things I use most are the Leukotape, pain killers, and scissors. I am contemplating adding a snakebite kit if I go to more remote areas here in Australia, but if I was hiking in other countries I wouldn’t bother.

Background

My hiking companion and I recently completed the Overland Track in Tasmania, and they posted a picture of our packs on a related group on Facebook. There was an overwhelming response, ranging from good job! to you’re a liar or you surely didn’t have a tent or you must be on a tour and didn’t bring food.

I can understand the skepticism. Upon inspecting what people brought, and never used, there is definitely a preference for people to pack their fears. Considering this track seemed to be the first time many people have done a multi-day backpacking trip, there were a lot of things they likely would not pack after gaining a little more experience.

The consequences were very real. Most people had knee or foot problems by the time they reached Narcissus Hut, and I was one of only a few people able to hike out (~18km) when the ferry was cancelled (made it in about 3hr 45min and made my transport). One of my more lasting memories from the hike was stumbling on a couple hiking and one of the people being unable to cross a fallen tree because their bag was too heavy, and their partner had to help push them up.

The track was likely especially scary for newcomers given the weather we encountered was “the worst so far this season”, according to our track transport. A week before we went the weather was supposed to be six days of glorious 5 - 10 C temperatures with only a little drizzle. The night before we flew out of Sydney it was forecasted to snow 1 - 2 mm one of the days. The actual weather was non-stop rain or snow, temperatures ranging from -2 to 3 C, and we only saw blue sky once. Once. I don’t remember ever seeing the sun from start-to-finish. It felt like we spent more time walking in streams or mud than on actual dry soil.

The Overland Track. Plan ahead and say goodbye to mobile reception.

Given we encountered just about the worst the trail could throw at us outside of winter, how do we know we brought just the right amount of stuff?

1. We were one of only two parties from our van transport that even stayed in our tent
2. We never shivered a single time, nor did we think we were ever in any danger
3. The ferry was cancelled when we rolled in to Narcissus Hut, so 16 extra people had to stay overnight; about five of them didn’t have enough food, and we were the ones giving them food because we had plenty of food remaining (that said, we were also 1 1/2 days ahead of schedule)
4. People routinely borrowed our lighter, as the piezo on their stove was broken
5. We had hot meals every night, coffee twice a day, and still had fuel left over
6. We let three people charge their phones at NH so they could sort out travel arrangements, as they didn’t have a spare power bank

Suggestion From What We Saw

Here’s a list of things that we saw people bring, but with suggested substitutes that would reduce overall weight while not reducing safety or comfort. You might think “that’s only 50g savings”, but it all adds up. We had by far the lightest bags with a total pack weight of around 8 kg (with 1 litre of water), and the heaviest in our van was 23kg. Most were around 15kg.

Camp Shoes

Seen Brought: 2nd pair of sneakers for camp shoes

Better: Crocs/Flip-Flops or hotel slippers

Best: Plastic bags

A lot of people brought a 2nd pair of sneakers just for walking around the huts. Many people were a little more wise and brought a lighter pair of Crocs (good for socks, but mine weight 349g) or flip-flops (mine weigh 155g), but I’d argue that hotel slippers (mine weigh just 39g) serve the same purpose. Or bring two bread bags and when you get to the hut take off your wet socks, put them immediately on or near the heater, put on your sleep socks, and put on bread bags on top of them. You can then wear your wet shoes without getting your sleep socks wet.

Fresh Fruit / Veggies

Seen Brought: Fresh Fruit/Veggies

Better: Dried fruit / dehydrated veggies

Best: None

Feel free to bring a fresh apple for lunch the first day, but fresh fruit is extremely heavy for the calories they provide. We saw people four days in giving away cucumbers / zucchini. To put this in perspective, 100g of cucumbers have 72 calories vs. 100g of peanut m&m have 516 calories.

Tinned Food

Seen Brought: Cans of tuna

Better: Starkist tuna packets

Best: Jerkey or biltong or just nuts or peanut butter m&m

On my first multi-day hike several years ago with this hiking companion my shopping instructions where: if it has to cook, then it needs to be able to be done in less than 3 minutes, and no cans or jars of anything. Bringing in a can of tuna, which isn’t even that calorie dense to begin with, means you have to keep carrying that tin your entire hike. If you must bring in a tuna packet, but do a little research, as you can save significant weight by paying attention to the food you bring. Please see Skurka’s post for some overall tips, and then over at Greenbelly for some actual food/weight breakdown. Please see below for our food breakdown. We deviated a little bit in what we ended up buying in TAS (e.g. no banana chips), but it was plenty. If you have the time, and like planning, then consider doing the same. Alternatively, and this is the guideline I follow if I do not intend to do much planning, then try to buy food at Woolies or Coles that is as close to 2000kJ per 100g as possible.

Initial food planning for two

Tools / Kitchen Stuff

Seen Brought: Small cast iron skillet, hunting knives

Better: Not a cast iron skillet

A lot of people were cooking pretty elaborate meals, which is pretty impressive. They also brought four pans and three canisters of fuel. I hesitate making recommendations on food, but I’d probably suggest getting some dehydrated meals from Snowys a few weeks in advance, and you won’t need all those pots and pans. Another nice thing is you can use the package as a container, so one less bowl to bring and clean. Bring one spoon with a long handle (sporks might sound nice, but if you’re eating cous cous or something small, then you can’t easily scoop it up, and I would hesitate that you might pop a hole in a dehydrated bag).

Duplicate Clothing / Cotton

Seen Brought: “I’m wearing four fleeces” or duplicates of every item

Best: Skurka’s Core 13

TAS Parks provides a list of minimum gear that you need to bring, but I don’t think you need to bring more than what is on it. Even better would be to read the article by Andrew Skurka on the Core 13 items he suggests you bring. We surprisingly saw quite a bit of cotton shirts / pants being worn, which was a surprise.

Big Trowel

Seen Brought: Metal garden trowels

Better: Deuce of spaces

Best: Nada

I typically carry a ‘deuce of spades’ on any overnight, but in the case of the Overland, if doing it again, I’d probably skip bringing it. There are toilets at every site, and the ground was pretty moist, so digging a cat hold wouldn’t be a problem.

Water

Seen Brought: People carrying 5L of water

Better: 2L

Best: 1L + Sawyer Squeeze (filter)

When we went there was water everywhere, like, it felt like most of our time was walking in streams. If you aren’t in a stream, then you are no more than 1km away from crossing some stream. Our van driver / ex-guide said she didn’t filter often, but for some reason I have a fear of water, so I tend to always filter unless high up in the mountains. I brought a 1L balance water bottle and a filter, and never once needed more than that. Most of the time I just filtered at the huts and filled up there.

First Aid Kits

Seen Brought: 1kg kits from Big W

Better: make it yourself

It seems like quite a few people thought “huh, I need a FAK, I’ll get the next one I see” and end up with something that has a million bandaids and big gauze pads, but nothing you actually need. You can see what is in my FAK, which probably still has too many wipes, but I can deal with the most common issues: blisters, and soreness. It weights about 60g / 2oz.

Books

Seen Brought: several hardback books

Better: Kindles

Best: skip books and chat with people or Audible

One lady opened her bag and pulled out multiple books, read for 20 minutes, then chatted with people. Bring a kindle. Or realise it is only 4 - 6 days, and leave the books at home and chat with people. I tend to load up my phone with books on Audible or podcasts.

We Wish We Brought…

You can read above that we had planned more for the experience than most people, and we have done several other multi-day hikes previous. I am immensely glad I read one of Ray Jardin’s books back in ~2002 to learn how to prepare for backpacking and stop packing my fears.

There wasn’t much we wish we would have brought, except for perhaps some type of mittens that would have blocked the wind. When hiking on the ridges the temperature ended up dropping significantly, and when combined with the wind, it made my hands quite cold. We kept moving and that kept us generating heat, but stopping on a ridge would have been uncomfortable.