The makings of a Mid Life Crisis

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of that age old adage “having a mid-life crisis”. Typically, it’s applied to us mere men folk as we hit that magical mid 40’s to 50 mark. No one can tell me why it occurs. Science says it could be a waning testosterone level,  resulting in a phycological dread that signals the lizard part of our brain to acknowledge that we simply can’t do what we used to do. In a desperate measure we fight it with all our might but this catalytic emotion bubbles away and builds and builds until it is the perfect storm. The Tsunami erupts and we usually do something considered outside the norm of society. Some get off lightly - they buy a motorbike to feel the wind blowing through their receding hairlines, some jump out of planes or date younger women. Others aren’t so lucky, they really ramp it up and throw caution to the wind, in a desperate bid to get back some of the  "Glory Days”. (Check out the song by Bruce Springsteen, sums it up nicely! 50 million views can’t be wrong,  myself included.) I‘ve always done some crazy Travel adventures. I have dived 60m to shipwrecks in Tuk Lagoon, ridden a motorbike without any training through the Simpson desert, hitchhiked through Africa and backpacked through central America, to name a few. So I figured if you’re going to have a midlife crisis then you might as well do so in spades. I don’t know how it happened but somehow, somewhere I came up with the crazy idea, with my good mate Dan, to walk the Continental Divide Trail  (CDT). If you  have never heard of it well then you’re not to blame, click on the link for more info but suffice to say it’s a 5000km  six month stroll through the wilderness of America, with bears, avalanches, blistering deserts and extreme isolation, you get the picture!  And if that wasn’t a big enough challenge I figured I could spice it up a little by having NO experience whatsoever on a multi day hike, so really what could go wrong - sounds like a challenge worthy of Bilbo Baggins.

Coutts Point, Larapinta Trail a top of the world moment

Fortunately for me COVID came along, slammed borders shut and my mid-life crisis dreams were put on the back burner. Roll on two years later and the mid-life crisis demon is back. So now older but not necessarily wiser I started training again in an attempt to get fitter. Credit card in hand, internet at the ready, google was my best friend and I started researching and buying up ultra-light equipment like I was a madman. 
Training in Willowra soon saw me quickly go from couch to 25km at the leisurely pace of 15 minutes per kilometres over the 12 week contract. I knew I wasn’t going to break any land speed records but I felt good and besides the odd blister I perceived I was moving in the right direction. About week  three into this training regime I had an epiphany … Willowra is flat as a pancake and the CDT is all about mountains, shit I better find me some mountains, … enter the Larapinta Trail moment of madness. 
Sure I always knew it was there and I had googled it before. But had quickly dismissed it as a pretty easy trail that was only a mere lazy 231 kms long and hardly a challenge in comparison to the CDT (hindsight is a beautiful beast). But I needed mountains for my training so being the nearest thing to mountainous terrain Larapinta Trail,  by default, was going to be my testing ground. Call it naivety, call it lack of informed research but I honestly thought this trail was going to be a walk in the park and I couldn’t have been further from the truth. 

Just a lazy ridge walk, one little slip and its bye bye