Michael,Smurf,my 2 girls and myself arrived at Mt Ives at around 5:30 pm on Friday arvo. We met up with senior saltologist Cookie and his child minding wife Cathy. Cookie and Cathy had previously attended on the lake and found it to be in relatively good health, albeit portion of a full track. Cookie shared his autocad expertise withus and he had plotted our track in with the GPS. From discussions at the dinner table and over some bottles of red the decision was going to be how much of a track can be preped and which direction was going to be the safest option. Armed with Cookies data maps we all agreed that we would run north to south allowing a greater safety for turn outs and return roads,ect.
Up early Saturday morning and lake bound, the ramp was irreputably the best I and we have ever seen, with a very thick covering that would with stand the rigors of constant traffic throughout the week. We drove out to the 32nd paralell (track race line) and headed south for ground zero, for those that are lost this is the zero mile marker of our track (we normally start at 1 mile). This plot was in very good shape so we turned around and headed north and was able to get some really good hard salt up to the 4 mile mark about where the creek or low spot is. This area was damp and may have sustain multiple traffic flow. After this creek area the salt was very good through to Alcatraz island. At this point, well lets just say we had a mechanical failure which saw us going on a fitness spree. Later that evening back at Mt Ives all of us decided that we would stay on over night as it had rained at the station. We agreed to again on Sunday re check what had been plotted (so far the best we had for race week was nearly 4 mile with limited return track and pitting area.) Sunday morning ahd back on the lake well this living breathing bitch of a thing had changed again over night, no surface water to speak of but the all that was usable on Saturday was now far from race ready even to the untrained. We worked relentlessly all day plotting and moving all over the lake, again south and north of the creek to make this meeting happen, the best we can up with was 2 mile of average salt. I have not seen the condition of it change so rapidly. Yes I to have seen water on day and the next we are racing but this was different. it was dangerous at 60 ks let alone big mile an hour. We kept going well into the late afternoon looking to pull a miricle from somewhere even though by this point we had made the call to the committee to diseminate the bad news out to the members.
Nuf said. Only a big thank you to all the monitors over the last nearly 3 months, it has been a huge committment by those who assisted and if anything has come of this as Pete Noy said we are now seen in different light by the Aboriginal Rangers as an organisation that actually knows and cares about the lake, also some very usable data for next time. Catch ya at Omeo 
Plucka
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