Friday morning - the fog is lifting and teams are making their way down the mountain to the paddle leg

07:30 Two and a half days into the race and the team have spent a a cold night on the mountains. Many of the teams were planning to make use of the high country huts. The rain stayed away for most of the night however the temperatures dropped with the lack of cloud cover.

The Muppets, Caffeinated and the PNG Team all headed out from Falls Creek early morning. Caffeinated made the decision to skip CP 7 cutting the trek short and heading straight down the road to Mt Beauty.

Blackheart.com.au were into the TA at Ryders Bridge just before midnight and had made a good strategic decision on Tuesday to book into the caravan park ensuring a good nights sleep.

Blackheart/Salomon arrived about an hour later but camped at the TA.

Tangerine had plans to get some sleep higher in the mountain where is was a little warmer, but encountered a group of “real people” commented Heather this morning, at Bivouac hut, “the hut was so full that there was even A guy sleeping in the doorway”. So the team pushed on to sleep at the TA.

After a hard 85 km trek teams will be focused this morning on getting off their feet. Race officials paddled the top section of the Kiewa River last night, water levels in the river have increased so teams will now have an additional 8km on foot until the put in point at Redbank. This decision was made for safety reasons as the increase in the river levels had meant that there are now some low hanging trees that could easily snag. The bottom half of the river is not affected so teams will paddle this section as planned.

07:35 Blackheart.com.au have just arrived at Redbank ready to start their paddle. The team had quite a spring in their step after some sleep in a comfortable bed.

Teams (including the short-coursed teams) will arrive at Ryders Bridge TA throughout the day. Weather forecast is not looking too good so soon teams will be encountering some more inclement conditions!

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