Not learning my lesson from my two previous falls with a heavy, badly distributed pack, I experience one of the most spectacular falls of my hiking career. Attempting to step over some of the many large roots on the trail, I slip and fall backwards and down a slope, landing with the top of my pack into green muck. I'm stuck like an over-turned tortoise, only at something like a 60 degree angle with my feet in the air, pack and head in the ooze. I start to think about how many snakes I've probably landed near and quickly struggle out of my pack, and then haul it out. Well, it didn't take me long to get dirty again! Good thing I didn't hit my head on a rock or I'd be well on my way to becoming a fossil.

I camp on the beach at Echo Point because the hut has been completely taken over by a large group of twelve. I later learn that they've been knicknamed "the steam train" by other hikers for the way they come down the trail en masse. They're nice enough people though, waving sparklers in the evening to celebrate New Year's.

A new day and a new year and it isn't raining on me. At Narcissus hut I find my old walking stick, left there by accident. It feels like an old friend. I'm tired by the time I reach Pine Valley, but the weather's pretty good. Once again I go by the philosophy that you don't climb mountains at your convenience, you climb them when they let you. This is particularly true in this area, which has a reputation for weather that can turn deadly. A young woman went missing here a few years back and her body was never recovered. Everyone says the devils ate it, every bit of it, before the searchers could get there.

So, after a quick lunch I'm up on the Labyrinth. If my muddy start gave me any doubts about the wisdom of returning to the Overland, especially with a forecast calling for three more days of rain, they are completely erased with a few hours of clear weather on the Labyrinth. Everything changes on the plateau, with low, gnarly vegetation, a sharp drop-off that overlooks Long Lake at the bottom, and most especially, the maze of rocks that give the Labyrinth its name. Wedged between the Parthenon and the Walled Mountain lay groups of tall, standing rocks, seemingly congregated for a meeting or concert, or watching and waiting in judgement. Truely this is one of the highlights of this amazing trail.

Despite doubtful weather, I climb the Acropolis the next day. As with the trail to the Labyrinth, the way towards the Acropolis passes through the best and most amazing rain forest on the Overland. In fact, the rain forest around the Pine Valley hut is among the best I've seen anywhere, full of winding streams, great trees covered with colorful fungi and bright yellow worms, and wonderfully exotic pandani, which is actually the largest heath though it seems to resemble a palm. Again like the Labyrinth, the trail climbs to a plateau, with a boardwalk over alpine wetlands. Here I spot some sort of weird crayfish in the water, surprising for such altitude.

We're just getting started with the climbing though, rising up into rocks that seem to be the taller parents of the ones in the Labyrinth. Instead of going straight up to the top, the path winds around the mountain, so far that you think it will eventually go around the damn thing, before finally shooting up a crevice. This climbing is tricky, especially in the light rain I have, making the rocks very slippery. I only saw one other guy attempt the climb this day and he turned back before the top. I stubbornly push on and make it, but it is by far the most difficult climbing I did on the Overland. Coming down was actually the hardest part, since I lost the trail a few times in the fog and had to scramble around on the slick rocks for quite awhile before getting out.

The hut comraderie is as good here as it was during my first campaign. I play "400" cards and meet Nico and Lisa, who I will later see in Melbourne. All are thankful that the horde of obnoxious boy scouts that try to invade the hut find it full and have to camp down by the stream in the rain.

I hike out the next day and finally break down and take the ripoff ferry for the final stretch, figuring that two times along that slippery lake path was enough. I try to hitch out at Lake St. Claire but can not get a ride as I hike the entire 6k stretch out to the road. Here I will have one of the strangest hitching experiences of the trip.