Palm Valley Two

We had a (very thankfully) dry night. The update from the ranger in the morning started with the words “Don’t shoot the messenger…” – bad news as expected. Although our creek had gone down substantially, the Finke river was now flowing into the valley and the crossings were impassable from both ends (there were about 6 crossings between us and the main road – all of which were now well and truly under water). Since we weren’t going anywhere fast, we decided to see if we could walk into Palm Valley (4km from the campsite).

This road also crossed over the creek multiple times – every crossing being undrivable. We managed to skirt around the first few by clambering high on a ledge over rocks on the sidewall of the gorge, but eventually we got to a point where we couldn’t bush bash any further, and had to wade instead. We ended up wading two crossings – both around thigh-height and flowing fast (knee height on Ryan).

Palm Valley itself was well and truly under water. We think the whole gorge would have been full 24hrs earlier – by the time we got there it had reduced to a torrent down the centre where all the palms were. We did the longer walk which took us up on top of the gorge wall, giving incredible views of the flooded valley. It then climbed back down further up and we walked back through the gorge itself. Other campers had told us that there had been one point where the track was underwater before all the rain – this ended up being the only point on the valley walk where we needed to get wet. What had been a wade a few days ago was now ten feet wide, had a waterfall cascading down into it and was up to my chest in depth – by the time we figured that out, we were already pretty wet, so we simply pushed on and eventually made it back to the “parking lot” (difficult to distinguish under the dozens of puddles). Altogether it was a very unique way to see Palm Valley and we loved it (laughing at all the informative signs about how the trees survive in such an arid environment). Our legs were a bit tired by the time we got back though (altogether 13km).

The ranger came back around the same time we did with the news that we should make ourselves comfortable and that it might be days before the road out was reopened. There was even talk of organizing a food drop should we be stranded much longer. By this time, we were all getting to know each other pretty well, and gathered around a communal fire swapping stories until the cold eventually drove us to bed.