Wow, what a week it’s been; so busy in fact that I haven’t had time to post about my latest 4WD trip on the 24th and 25th July.

Having completed the Blackmountain Road and Bloomfield tracks; I was eager to try out some new ones in the Cairns area.  After a suggestion from another 4x4playfnq member; we decided to try the Seven Hills track from Mareeba to  Wangetti Beach.

Leaving at just after 8:00am, we headed to Mareeba on a slightly windy day here in Cairns, the BOM had forecast 20 knot winds so Matt and my other favourite weekend pastime of fishing wasn’t going to happen.

We found the entrance to the track and then proceeded down the sealed section, to where there was a clearing and then we could take our pick of what part of the track to tackle first.  Well this place could quite easily be a graveyard for 4WD’s stock out of the manufacturer – lots of stuff that we looked at would be easy to leave an axle of diff behind if you made the wrong decision without some form of a lift or tyre upgrade form factory standard.  After looking at several tracks and noting that there was no-one else in the area to give us a hand if we got stuck or worse, Matt and I  decided to head straight down the sealed section to Wangetti Beach for lunch that we had in the Waeco fridge in the tray.

Still, getting to here wasn’t going to be the easiest either.  The way out was steep and had a few angles to run:

Descent to the sealed part of the track

Given that it had been raining and when we got out at the top to walk the track down to get a better idea of how it would handle, Matt nearly slipped a few times on the way down.  After successfully navigating this section, there was then a climb that we had to do.  Now the climb itself wasn’t anything great but the Ranger has a bit of a poor departure angle, so anything where I have to climb out of any sort of gully is not going to be easy and may result in some damage:

The climb out to get back onto the sealed section

Further down the road, we saw several other little tracks leading off and decided to have a look down one that looked a lot flatter than the others so we turned off and headed down here. The grass was up to the bonnet but we kept on following the tracks where others had been before us.  Eventually we got to a section where I had toget out andhave a look at the terrain ahead; this didn’t look good so I made the decision to turn back.  Only problem being that there was not enough room to turn and that meant reversing some 300 odd metres back on a winding track.

We managed to get back out of the track again but had managed to start burning the clutch travelling so far in such a low gear.  To make things worse the clutch was so hot, that the pedal had a gotten stuck to the floor and I couldn’t get it free.  We were still able to move and seemingly (?) change gears so we got back out to the road and then pulled over for a bit.  After about 15 minutes, everything seemed to be back to normal and the clutch pedal could be used as per normal.  Made the decision right there and then to not tackle anything that was not flat or required lots of clutch work just to be safe.

Further down the road we found that the track intersected with Blackmountain Road; and we decided to complete the run via this track as we know it and it is relatively easy.

Well, this is the track that we should have done first!  The rain that had fallen had turned the track to mud and there was lots to slide around in playing on in amongst the firmer stuff.  We ended up doing it “backwards” as the route we chose came out at Kuranda.

Mist falling during a shower on Blackmountain Road

Heading down the range, we made Smithfield again in good time and headed home to have our lunch which we had needlessly packed in the Waeco fridge.  On the way home, Matt and I both commented that we had a lot of fun sliding around in the Mud and decided that we would see if the girls wanted to come for the second round after lunch.

A mud covered truck

As you can see the kids had heaps of fun writing graffiti in the mud afterwards
We had a great day and now I have a great track to do in the wet with lots of sliding around and mud to play in on a wet day and all up the two trips didn’t chew too much diesel either, so there was lots lots of fun with not much cost and we all gt to see a rainforest in the wet – don’t reckon that you can ask for too much more than that!!