Sun rise and walk at Kings Canyon and back to Alice.

Up at 4.30am for a quick breakfast before setting off to walk through King's Canyon. It was dark when we left the camp, but the sun had started to rise as we approached the Canyon. We had to each carry two litres of water to drink for the 6km walk around the rim ( as we had the previous day). Unfortunately in order to walk the rim, we had to climb up to it first; a very steep set of mostly natural steps aptly named "Heart Attack Hill", emergency radio contact point at the top! Even the fit young ones were wheezing by the top, whilst a few of us just wheezed all the way up. You couldn't look back or down at all. Once up, the walk was easier than the day before and the Canyon was well worth the climb. King's Canyon is a truly spectacular gorge with walls more than 300ft high, with fossilised tracks of ancient creatures and even ripple marks of an ancient sea in the rock that looked just like any beach of today. The rim walk afforded some stunning views of the valley below, a natural amphitheatre and of the Garden of Eden, a relatively lush river area within the gorge. One of the highlights was to be asked to jump over the gorge ?? no really - at the point nearest the start of the gorge where it is only a metre across but still deep. The descent was much easier, only 479 natural or man made steps, but we were all very weary when we got there and had drunk almost all our water. We felt sorry for the groups just arriving as it was already over 30C.
As we left the Canyon we realised that it was still not yet 10am, but the prospect of lunch in less than a hour was very welcome. We all felt so pleased to have done the walk in the cooler early morning and most of us slept on our way back to our camp. Once back we sorted out and said goodbye to our swags, which were so comfortable, bug free and warm, (highly recommended) whilst Locky cooked us Camel steaks and Beefburgers. The camel was not too bad if a bit stringy. Apparently it's a very healthy low fat meat, but that still didn't persuade us all to try it, especially as there was a cute baby camel sitting not too far away.
After packing everything away we had a very quiet and sleepy five hour drive back to Alice Springs; exhausted but exhilarated by our camping tour. En route Locky stopped in the middle of nowhere for a picture opportunity of Mt Connor. He told us to climb a sand dune to get a better view and to see a lake on the other side. A lake in these arid parts? Yes, Lake Amadeus. The lake turned out to be a salt lake stretching 150 Kms to the north. We were seeing just the tip from about 1km. Suddenly we saw one of the keen Taiwanese photographers running towards the lake at full speed. He stopped at a smaller dune half way to the lake and climbed that for more photos. He then raced back (in jeans, shirt and full head cover - it was high 30's C)
Once back at the hotel in Alice and after a long shower and sorting out things for the flight to Perth we joined most of the tour party at Annie's, an Alice Springs backpacker hostel, for supper and a few beers which was enormous fun, but by 8.30pm everyone was ready to sleep, in a real bed.