The Cover Shot - Wild #190

It was already getting late in the day, and it had become apparent we were unlikely to make it to our intended campsite before nightfall. But that seemed a poor excuse to rush things; it’s not like we get to the Victorian High Country every day, and the views as we climbed towards the summit of the Bluff were too pre­cious to squander by merely racing to the top.

So instead we lingered. Not just at this viewpoint with Mt Cobbler in the distance, but at the summit of the Bluff to come, and then some more after that on a high, long, treeless ridge so broad and smooth it felt more like an uplifted alpine meadow than ridge.

In the end, this lingering would mean Ryan and I would walk for more than an hour in darkness, but we would do so on a soft night in which the air felt thick and warm, in which the moon and the stars burned so bright that I could float on high across the roof of Victoria without ever switching on my headlamp. It felt like I was gliding.

But before all that, before the darkness and the stars, there was this viewpoint on the ragged brow of the Bluff. I didn’t even need to tell Ryan to head to this spot on the edge to get a pic; he knew the second he saw it to head there. It was our first truly amazing viewpoint of our trip; it was far from our last.

You can read the accompanying story in Issue 190’s Track Notes starting on p128.

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