We started at Scenic World with a descent down Golden Stairs, which reopened recently in August, massively slashing walking times compared to starting from Furber Steps. Half of the group are first-time campers and carrying such loads for the first time can be a challenge. I didn't mind the slow pace as my right knee was in pain following 6 days on the Overland Track, and I was also getting used to my new trailrunners I got from a clearance. Clearance gear is always good except for the cringe colour choices you get- at least it's not pink or barbie colours, I assume. At least my pack is way lighter than 6 days on Overland, which is great news for my knees, edging closer and closer to those of my patients.

For beginners, I've streamlined the camping preparation process with a webpage that explains all the necessary packing. The website seemed to have worked well with everyone completing their pre-reading, and no one brought anything massively out of place. A German exchange student was planning a Byron Bay trip using the overnight train plus a bus connection, reminding me of the exact same thing I've done for a weekend to Murwillumbah, a picturesque town up the north coast at the base of Mt Warning. The midnight bus leaves at 2 am with only 5 passengers from a place called Casino, our mojo dojo casa house, yet has to stop at every single stop starting from Lismore, Ballina, then all the small settlements towards Byron, before climbing up the scenic hinterland right after sunrise. Bangalow Rd between Lismore and Byron, where the bus travels through, is always very scenic, and that's the beauty of public transport- it's relaxing, and you see things you wouldn't normally see flying or driving.

Having my new phone in my pocket, it's the perfect place to try out its 4x optical zoom. Works great for scenery like distant mountains, but not so much with animals and plants- there's too much motion artefact. Finally something that matches my Hong Kong friend's Samsung S22 Ultra, without Samsung AI's signature feature of zooming into the moon and having all the details generated. 

At Ruined Castle campground we filled up our bottles one last time from the rain tank. We met another group camping overnight at that campground, and it was surprising to find one of them being a former SUBW member. We disseminated tea around the 2022 PBT trip which he was on, while others made lunch and took turns using my old, slowly clogging up filter. The walking track continued with a lot of gum trees on the side, before the scramble up to Mt Solitary eventually starts. It's an easy scramble with most rocks being fairly step-like. The group slowly went up, juggling around the dimensions of our big backpacks. 

Between sections of scrambles are tiny decks with great views over the entire valley. While waiting for the others, I tested my 4x optical zoom camera, which worked great with the tiny details down the valley. This is also where we're facing directly towards Ruined Castle and Castle Head, with Ruined Castle looking more like a tiny lump from this height. 

As we continued through our last scramble, I powered ahead to check out the campsites. With school holidays starting the campsites are all fairly busy, and it took a bit of walking to find a decent empty site. Three of us dropped our backpacks to claim a decently sized site, with enough space for roughly 5 tents. We went along to see if there were better sites for our big group, and eventually decided to check out Chinaman's Gully Campground. There's a nice lookout on one of the rocks by the side, where we had our afternoon chat while others work their way up the mountain.

Heading back, everyone is nice and ready at where we dropped our packs. With 9 tents, we decided to split them across 2 sites, with the big club tents taking over the main site, those with their own tents on the smaller site, and me camping at a random spot in between. The two sites are 2 minutes away, which isn't a great deal. We took our time setting up tents and returned to the main site for dinner. 

With our captivating audience ready, we started our slide night. I started with pictures of the Overland Trip we just did, running through what we packed (courtesy of Liam's lighterpack site), the snowy and un-snowy days, and the huts we've been in. Nothing beats a Tasmanian holiday after all. Then come pictures of Hong Kong, which I've had on my iPad for ages. The theme of the slides is "Hong Kong- Borders & Connections", featuring different settlements and bush tracks along the Hong Kong-Chinese border. Villagers across the border were historically able to cross freely, until border control was tightened with the Communist government in China, and a frontier closed area (a controlled access zone before the actual border) was created to limit illegal crossings. As China develops, many of the villagers' properties were taken over by the government for high-rise developments, like how one of my classmates hates Shenzhen Metro since they demolished his family home. Villages and nature remained untouched, just like in the past under the policy, making them great places for a weekend hike, exploring the abandoned lookout towers and military installations. Some say Hong Kong's border is a vanishing border, and as tides shift around border villages, it'll be fun to see whether frontier closed areas become frontiers to China.

We then had Sophia share her adventures in Switzerland in a multi-day hut hike. The huts are luxurious with meals served, much unlike the barebone wild camps here in Australia. Apparently difficulty levels on Swiss walks are decided by the army, which is much unlike the expectations of a normal person. Harry then shared his experience in an outdoor camp in America, where the group had to survive all on their own with limited supplies. In the experience field when he signed up, he mentioned how he was eating grass on a trip, and I've always been intrigued to hear more about life on Trump land. On his trip, there was an average American who didn't respect group rationing of food and kept eating into the rations of the days ahead, hiding food away from others leaving them starving, and Harry feeling so exhausted that he had to eat grass. The night concluded with (another) Sofia's slides on her summit on Tateyama in Japan. It was summer yet the alps are, like all the alpine areas, unpredictable in weather. It's the few places where praying to Buddha is more effective than reading weather forecasts, and as one person wrote in a logbook on the Overland track: "In his heart, a man plans his course, but the lord determines his steps."

Our night concluded with some silly campground games and stories. The slide night was a great success and it's definitely worthwhile to be a recurring event. The only downsides are that there's still mobile reception on Mt Solitary, and in future, more remote locations will be ideal. Camping in a campground with internet means random tents will go BAHAHAHAHA in the middle of the night, as they catch up on Instagram reels, and friends waiting for them to disseminate reels. 

One thing that's great with slide night is that it's the core of original research. People going to places and discovering elements nowhere found on the internet. This is probably why all the new books are boring and a waste of planetary resources- we're obsessed with citations and quoting big words, and the metric of how we define a good book becomes how well they quote big concepts, and that's how we end up with everything feeling like a Wikipedia copypasta. Original research is what keeps humans who we are, keeping it uniquely ours, and something AI will never be able to accomplish. Most new books have insufficient original research, and one great feature of my Kindle reader is the ability to populate it with exclusively pirated books. These readers last weeks without charging and are great for camping trips- even track notes can be loaded onto them. 

Every morning, when I wake up, the sun rises. Some people went for sunrise but turned back just before the steep descent into Chinaman's Gap campground. We went back the same way, stopping at Ruined Castle campground for water refill. Shortly after we went up Golden Stairs back to Katoomba, had a late lunch and started their train journey home.