Australian Alps Walking Track - Mt Wills Hut to Taylors Crossing

Day: 15
Date: Wednesday, 01 May 2019
Start:  Mt Wills Hut
Finish:  Taylors Crossing Hikers Campground
Daily Kilometres:  26.1
Total AAWT Kilometres:  322.5
Weather:  Foggy then overcast with occasional rain and high winds
Accommodation:  Tent
Nutrition:
  Breakfast:  Muesli
  Lunch:  Trail Mix
  Dinner:  Rehydrated Meal
Aches:  Both very tired
Highlight:  After a pretty wet day, having a dry last two hours of walking to reach the very pretty hikers' campground at Taylors Crossing, where we managed to set up camp, wash and eat just before it started raining again.  Very lucky timing.
Lowlight:  Fog and cloud prevented views for most of the day.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:

We delayed getting up to 6:30, and left Mt Wills Hut around 7:30, having farewelled our fellow hiker residents.  They were also hiking the AAWT, but only the section from Hotham to Thredbo, and planning to take 17 days.  We plan on 8 days for the same section.  It's possible we will see them again, since they also have food cached near the Benambra-Corryong Road, where we will be spending much of tomorrow, but probably not.

There should have been great views from Mt Wills as we traversed its alpine summit, but it was very foggy and breezy, and even navigation was difficult, with the GPS resorted to on several occasions.  I was listening to the morning news as we hiked and heard there was a severe weather warning for all Victorian alpine areas.  We were lucky that most of today's hiking was going to be about descending from the alpine areas, and although we had enough rain to make things unpleasant, and we could hear the wind roaring in the tree tops, it wasn't too bad.

The rain did make the steeper descents tricky in parts, but there were many sections of the day's hiking where we travelled along narrow trails through dense wet forest, and there's something beautiful and atmospheric about the Australian bush in the rain.  Our route went along the Omeo Highway for a couple of kilometres, and we saw a few vehicles, the only people we saw all day after leaving Mt Wills and before getting to Taylors Crossing where there were a couple of tourists.

From the Omeo Highway, a long descent down Gill Spur brought us to Gill Creek, a damp ferny place where we had lunch. It was probably here that we picked up some leeches, a couple of which left Julie hiking all afternoon with spectacularly bloody legs.  After fording Gill Creek, there was a monster ascent in the rain on a narrow track through sodden vegetation up to the top of the Wombat Range that left us both exhausted.  But from there, the rest of the day was almost entirely on firetrail and the rain eased, making for very pleasant walking at a good pace.  We pushed on to Taylors Crossing, a few kilometres further than scheduled, knowing the camping there was good (see above).  We now have an even shorter day tomorrow (9km) to our food cache on a day forecast to be very wet, so we might just get there, set up the camp, and spend the rest of the day eating (our treats), reading and sleeping inside the tent.