ribuck wrote:...and? Don't hold us in suspense, wildwanderer!
and... thats it. Aside from a determined possum failing to steal/reach my suspended food bag that night, the rest of the trip was uneventful. Being midweek the area was quiet, I saw no one the next day and my second night camp at Acacia Flat was similarly empty. I did run into a couple of National Parks guys doing trail maintenance up near Govetts Leap on the 3rd day. I mentioned the axe/abandoned gear to them and they said they would make a note of it.
devoswitch wrote:How strange.... A quick search reveals 2 missing walkers in the grose valley back in 2015. Not sure if they were ever found. How old did the stuff seem.
Hard to tell but going from the faded labels on the tinned food Id say atleast a few weeks maybe a lot longer. If your referring to this missing walking party
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/search-for-missing-bushwalkers-continues-20151004-gk0sv4.html I strongly doubt there is any connection. The area they went missing is almost 50km downstream and through quite rough, slow walking country if following the river.
Edit. Saw an online article that mentioned they were were found safe and well.
The Mt Victoria station to Blackheath station section of the Grose Valley that I did is fairly popular, Id assume a group every few days would walk it. If I had to speculate, Id say the abandoned gear was possibly washed downstream at some point and someone has collected it and dumped it at the campsite, likely other similarly mundane explanations as well. Of course, when you combine it with the axe it made for a strange/spooky thing to find when out on a solo wilderness walk.