Silver Peaks Track

The Silver Peaks Track is a 40km (26 miles) round trip tramp through various different ecosystems and took us two days to complete. The terrain wasn't extremely exhausting but physically it was very exhausting, (13 miles a day hiking with gear). We left the first morning at around 7am and began our trek out of town. As soon as we get onto the track (about 3 miles out of town) it begins to rain. Nothing to hard, just a very light drizzle. We figured it wouldn't last too long and that the clouds would burn off after a couple of hours. Boy were we wrong. The clouds didn't burn off at all, they actually got thicker the further we go into the track. For about 3 hours while traversing the peaks of these mountains our visibility wasn't more than 100m; we were literally hiking through clouds. The rain also never stopped. For 8 long hours it rained on us non stop; but like I said it wasn't heavy rain, it was just constant. It was also very windy. Needless to say it was pretty brutal conditions, especially since most of the people in our group had never done any real hiking (there were 13 of us in the group). Anyways, we pushed on, hiking through all kinds of wetlands, forests, shrubbery, pines, tropical trees, grasslands, every kind of 'land' you could imagine, chances are we hiked through it. ALso, since it was raining and had been for quite some time, the ground was no longer solid and we were pretty much hiking through mud the entire time, so it got pretty muddy. Luckily nobody ate it. Despite the rain, wind, and clouds, it was still a very nice tramp with plenty of decent views. One of the main things that kept us going was the hope that the next day would be nicer and we would actually be able to see what we were tramping through.

The last part of the hike (which would also be the first part of the hike in the morning) consisted of us basically climbing down this 400m spire known as 'The Devils Staircase'. This was actually pretty tough since it was still incredibly muddy and very steep. After making it down that there was a little river that we hung out at for a little bit while everybody got down and ready to move on to the hut we were planning on staying in for the night. The hut was a pretty decent sized place with two bunks that could fit about 5 people on each of them. Since it was so cold and wet we decided to huddle about 8 of us onto one of the bunks to stay warm, which worked amazingly well. The next morning we got up at sun rise and were actually able to see what we had been hiking through, and it was very nice. We packed our gear up, put on our still soaking wet and cold shoes and prepared for the journey home. The tramp back was very nice as it wasn't cloudy, wasn't raining, and wasn't windy. After the long walk home I though my knees were going to give out. I couldn't properly walk down stairs for the next two or three days. The hike was long, cold, wet, dirty, but a ton of fun.