Pencil Pine Bluff. Hasselblad 500C/M, Ektar 100, April 2023.
I walked out towards the great drop off at the edge of Pencil Pine Bluff just as an eerie mist came in. I had made it to the great precipice. I stood looking into Fury Gorge. At first I was unable to see much further than a hundred metres down. Then, the mist parted and what I saw left me feeling numb. The rocky escarpment that marks the edge of the plateau drops down in a series of quartzite ridges, chaotic and sharp. The depth and sheer nature of the gorge stunned me. It was so much bigger and steeper than I had imagined. I had a deep sense of foreboding, looking down. I finally understood how desperate Hellyer and his men must have been to drop into this ravine.
Scattered pencil pines. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.
As I stood there on the edge of the abyss, the weather deteriorated rapidly. My plan that day was to descend into the gorge, but my intuition told me to seek shelter and pitch my tent. It took me a while wandering around on the plateau in a dazed and confused state to find somewhere out of the wind among the pencil pines. I didn't feel cold, but it was snowing by the time I had pitched my tent. Later I realised I had been in the early stages of hypothermia. The wind had swung from a northerly to a south-westerly. I figured I'd sleep on it, and make a decision as to whether I would descend in the morning.
Blizzard on Pencil Pine Bluff. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.