Up at 7, the regular packup and get ready. I had some roof load problems yesterday. I didn’t really secure the empty Jerry to the roof too well, and it fell off. Self-inflicted, so a better job this morning.
We pull out around 9:30. We track back the 7-8k’s to the Rig road and follow this for about 30k’s. The dunes here are pretty tame, we crest a few to see the track heading out in front of us as straight as anything.
Towards the end of the Rig Road, we can see on the GPS, it starts have some bends in it, we follow the first one around, then crest a Dune to see this huge salt lake out there. The track can skirt the edge of the lake, or as we do, go straight though the middle. We’ve seen a few salt lakes, but driving across them is pretty cool.
We meet the Knolls track and start heading north. About 30ks of this too. I expected this to be flat and in the middle of the dunes like the Colson, but it seems to be riding the edges of the dunes. It pretty undulating too.
About 15k’s later we meet the WAA line, Nick walks up and has a look over the dune, we can see the WAA line crossing two huge Salt lakes. What the hell, we’re not going to be back here any time soon, so we turn and hit the WAA. We drive the two lakes and then turn around and come back, only a few K diversion, at least on the lakes we can do better than 11km/h
We continue on the Knolls track, I always keep an eye on my navigator, I can see we’re deviating a little from the map track, so I figure it’s a mapping error as we are pretty much following the same line just running a few hundreds metres parallel. After a few K’s the track turns to the right and I can see where getting further and further from the map track. George checks he’s offroad maps, and they look the same. The track looks too well formed to be a random, but could all the maps be wrong? We don’t recall seeing a turn. We agree we’ll continue on and see. 5’k later I can see we are at least still tracking with the Map track, and 10’ks later we arrive at the Knolls.
Time for some lunch.
Greg and I take a walk to the top on the Knoll, while not particularly high, it’s the only thing of any height around here. We can see a salt lake off in the distance.
It’s a warm day, around 32, that and the flies don’t make being outside very pleasant.
On the road again, it’s 4 pretty easy K’s back to the French line and we turn right. I’m expecting big dunes straight away, but is pretty easy with just undulating rises. We’ve got 33ks to get to Poeppels corner, could be easy could be hard, who knows.
We’ve been making a few calls over the radio, but we can’t hear anyone else, then we come over a rise to see a car in the next valley. Not sure why he didn’t answer, or make he’s own callout. Ends up he’s part of a group of 4, so we pull over the let them pass.
The dunes do start to get steeper and softer, not every dune, maybe every 5th or so dune is challenging. But having had some practice, I’m managing them reasonably well and only a couple need a 2nd attempt.
George get stuck on one, but gets over on the next attempt.
A Landcruiser couple that we met at Dalhousie catches us up, and as they’re moving a bit quicker we let them pass and say Hi!
We then come to a big dune, I grab out the video, as it should be entertaining…. George has a go, and does not quite make it, a 2nd attempt, nope, 3rd…..Nick has a go, nope. Oh, this is going to be interesting. They try the chicken track, not that that is much easier….nope.
We suggest dropping tyre pressures, only to find George’s pressure gauge is reading 3-4PSI more than both of mine. I thought his pressures where a little too high, but on that false reading they are way too high. We lower them down and low and behold they got over in the next try.
Only trouble is they now have an engine warning light….and soon the car goes onto limp mode. That doesn’t sound good.
We make it over a few more dunes, but it’s late and we decide to make camp before Poeppel and see what the car will do after a nights rest.
I pull my dash apart and pull out my scangauge, it’s a device that reads the codes from the car computer. It should tell us what error code the car has. Not that we’ll know what that code means…. If it’s not a super serious error, it should allow us to clear it. I’ve done that on my MUX when the DPF filter sensors stuffed up, but the error returned almost immediately. Fitted, we see the code and clear it and it does not seem to return. We’re all pretty convinced it was a Auto Transmission overheating, but we won’t know until we can look the code up. At least we can sleep a little easier tonight.
As we’ve travelled a little easer than planned, we think about what we might do to extend the stay an extra night. We think about a trip up the Hay River or down the K1 line track. We agree to decide in the morning
Fire and as normal some great stars tonight.
