Harvey Dam July 2021

Attendees

Joel, Taylor – Zook

Don – Patrol

Simon, Jacob – Perentie

Sean, Deb – Triton

Matt – Paj

Don and I inherited this trip from Roger at the AGM, nothwithstanding the fact that the trip was due to begin on Saturday on the same week, and we didn’t have any trip notes and hadn’t been to Harvey for a couple of years. 

In the interests of a good trip, I was struck down by an illness which prevented me from working on the Friday, but did not prevent me from going to Harvey to have a look around, with the assistance of some waypoints from Dave. 

On the Saturday morning, our little convoy set off from Harvey at Sierra/Perentie speed (that is 105 on downhill sections, 85 on uphill sections) and made out way down Honeymoon road towards Harvey Dam. 

The first challenge was a series of steep downhill sections, rendered slippery by the rain, which everyone negotiated without a challenge.

We took a short break and took in the photogenic natural blow out surrounded on three sides by sharp cliffs before moving on to the next obstacle. 

The next obstacle was steep section running parallel to the dam, which appeared innocuous, but ultimately required winching for most of the convoy.

Good communication and planning was evident in the course of all the recoveries, and I need to especially thank Sean, who found an alternative route to position a winch vehicle, and Simon who was patient in waiting for his turn to have a crack. 

Lunch was taken at a flat Rock, which offered a view of the whole dam, before we moved to the post lunch obstacles which included a couple of steep and technical descents which were confidentially handled by the whole convoy. 

We next found ourselves at the bottom of the same hill Dave had taken us to in May, on which almost everyone had managed to clip their right rear quarter panel. Having dented my sister’s car driving the hill in May, I managed to repeat the feat in my own car, before the rest of the convoy decided that discretion was the better part of valour and found an alternative route.

The rest of the day saw the convoy skirt the edges of Harvey Dam, including a number of excitng muddy sections and me having to roll around in the mud to change a tyre, having managed to get mud in the bead. 

All in all, it was a good trip, which given the lack of planning was hopefully a reasonably smooth experience. 

See you out there. 

Joel