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What an adventure!

Doing the TGO Challenge has been an absolute blast from start to finish. All the planning and preparation paid off and I found I was able to complete the walk as planned with no major hiccups. It was tough, yes, and some of the terrain was difficult but not unfamiliar to me having done an amount of off-track walking in Tasmania. There were surprises, the biggest being the mild weather. It would have been a lot harder if the weather from last year had repeated this year.

Full report and photos coming soon!

Looking Back towards Glen Strathfarrar on day 3 of the Challenge:

Via Perth, Singapore, Heathrow, and Gatwick.

Less said the better. No problems with any of the connections or volcanic ash. Had a decent meal on Tuesday night then passed out and had a great sleep in the B&B – the dinner before that was on Sunday night (not counting airline food)

The A380 from Singapore was very good, a bit smoother than the 747, and it has a tail webcam you can access from the inseat entertainment unit. Great for watching dawn over Russia at 12000 metres, I recomend it!

A Camera mount on a walking pole turns it into a makeshift monopod. Whilst not as stable as a tripod, it’s a lot better than none at all!

I ordered the camera mount from PacerPole UK to provide a lightweight stability aid for my camera on the TGO Challenge. When it arrived I realised that although it was light weight, attaching and removing the camera from it involved screwing it into the 1/4″ tripod thread on the base of the camera and tightening the locking ring. Too fiddly by far if you intend on regular use. Additionally, the locking ring did not sit flat on the GF1’s base as the tripod mount sits fractionally proud of it, thereby leaving a small contact area. Not really ideal. Having the 1/4″ thread is a bonus, because a lot of quick-connect fittings can use that thread.

After having a good look around the web and at my existing tripod setups, I settled on a couple of items from Kirk Enterprises: The PZ-130 Camera Plate for the GF1 (plates are available for most cameras), and the QRC-1 1″ Quick Release Clamp

The plate fits to the tripod mount of the camera and stays there – it’s small and light and allows all normal access to battery and SD card etc.

The Pole-end components:

The Clamp has a standard 1/4″ thread so it will mount on the threaded post of the PacerPole camera mount. As luck would have it, the length of the thread is exactly right, and after removing the locking ring from the camera mount, it sits down nice and tight and almost aligned N/S with the pole grip.

Mounting the camera mount onto the PacerPole involves removing a little filler plug and pushing the bayonet firmly into the exposed socket:

And the completed mount with camera attached:

Weight of the completed mount is 58g and there’s another 20g in the camera plate. I don’t expect to leave the mount on the pole all the time, but it’s certainly light enough to do so if required.