Mt Maroon micro adventure

Wow, what a second micro adventure for this weekend.  We, Kerrie, Natasha and I (Luke had to work) caught up with April, Rochelle, Cath and Katie to walk up Mt Maroon.  It was a beautiful crisp winter morning when we set out at 8 am.  I left the six girls to run the 2.2 km 21% gradient up the mountain and I would re-join them later.  It was an awesome slog and I was pretty happy with my time of 45 minutes.  The summit was just awesome in the morning light and nobody else being there. At that time, I thought it was a good achievement.  On the way I ran into one of Luke’s climbing buddies and his girlfriend who were checking out some awesome trad routes.  I also saw a pretty good runner coming up the mountain and it looked like my time would be beaten today.  Little did I know.

I soon caught up with the others about half way down the mountain and we all headed back up together, just as the runner came running back down again.  He was going great guns.  We worked ourselves up through the gorge and I enjoyed all the sights you don’t see while running.

We had a nice morning tea on a rocky outcrop and the girls went a bit further exploring the mountain.

Although it was pretty sheltered we started to cool down quickly and headed up towards the summit.  The vegetation changed to a nice lush wooded area before we reached the rock slabs that needed traversing to get to the top.

We reached the top where another few groups also enjoyed the spectacular 360 degree views.  Lo and behold, the runner that we saw earlier turns up again for take 2.  I was pretty impressed.  We decided to have lunch and I revived having some coffee that I lugged all the way up.

The way down was a lot easier going and we passed a lot of other groups hiking up.  The girls were going awesome and they had a lot of fun.  As we were going down the gorge I couldn’t believe my eyes when we saw the runner again for take 3.  But not to worry, we steadily kept on going down and soon where once again overtaken by the runner, surely not to see him again.  But no, he managed to pass us again for a fourth time up the mountain.  This guy’s insane!  Although he was a bit scratched up and looked a lot dustier then the first few times.

We enjoyed looking back up the mountain to appreciate what we achieved and soon made it to the car park, where not long after we applauded the runner as he staggered in after his fourth time up the mountain.  I have to take my hat off to the guy especially when I later checked Strava and realised that he not only ran up and down a 21% gradient Mt Maroon 4 times today in 4 hours and 13 minutes but he also did Mt Warning yesterday 4 times for a total of 55 km in 7 hours. This dude does the Gold Coast Marathon to warm up.

We thoroughly enjoyed our outing with great company and although we only did the mountain once, we had a great sense of achievement and are looking forward to our next adventure.