Bibbulmun Track - day 05

Up early with an alarm for a longish day. Beauty surrounds us : forest with banksias and cycads, still pools either side of the trail in spots, rock escarpments, creeks and even a river. Longish but not unkind ascent up to morning break which we had on the trail. We then hiked on through a spectacular section with the tallest grass trees I've ever seen. Late morning was a long and slow climb up a dirt road, then still climbing off-road until the turnoff to Monadnocks Hut, where we stopped for lunch. Signed the logs and checked the hiker box to find an unopened plastic jar or nutritional yeast, which we gleefully ganked. Thanks for your donation to the cause, unknown hiker! The hike after lunch went from easygoing to quite a long and occasionally slow ascent to Mt. Cuthbert. We were lucky enough to have some spectacular views. A little tricky finding the trail exit from the rocky escarpments at the summit, but some cairns helped. By the time we'd descended a bit from Cuthbert and ascended to Mt. Vincent, the predicted rain came in as a downpour, so not much in the way of views were had as we donned rain gear and descended at best careful speed. Once the worst of the descent was done, the walk to the Mt. Cooke group campsite was easy and quick on the whole. The campsite had a great shelter but no sleeping platforms, so we walked on to the official Bibbulmun Mt. Cooke campsite, where we met Hayley (whose log entries we'd been seeing for days!) and a little later Rhea showed after Mim messaged her our change of plans. Usual camp stuff and we tried to get as many of our wet things dry as we could.