Changes...

Readers of the Long Way's Better will likely have noticed a significant reduction in the frequency of posts over the last couple of years, and it has now been over half a year since I last posted a new trail write up to the blog, with that post itself being a long overdue write up about a walk I did two years earlier in the before times. While this was not something that happened by choice, the time away has afforded me a lot of space to think about the blog, what hiking means to me and re-evaluate what I want out of it. 

While the pandemic years limited my options, I feel like I really made the most of 2020. The relative freedoms afforded to us in the COVID-free 'island within an island' that was Western Australia may have seen my hiking opportunities limited to a state I've explored extensively, but I found new ground by switching to bikepacking the Munda Biddi Trail. Breaking it up into pieces to last most of 2020, it may not have had the breadth and depth of 2018 (my greatest year of adventure), but the newness of bikepacking and seeing familiar landscapes from a different perspective made it an exciting and fulfilling year. 

I can't say the same about 2021. In July, Alissa and I could see the slow train wreck that was the Delta outbreak unfolding, and tearfully had to cancel a Thorsborne Trail trip we've been trying to do every year since 2017 just a week out from departure after a lockdown was declared. Having put aside September for non-hiking reasons (more on that later), our next planned trip was for the Christmas holidays. 

Obligated by Alissa's employment as a school teacher to always travel during school holidays, the weeks leading to our planned departure on Christmas Day was an even more sickening slow motion disaster as we watched other state borders open, Omicron cases explode and the border conditions with WA worsen. Just three days before Christmas we had to make the painful decision to cancel a holiday Alissa and I had booked to celebrate ten years together, which was meant to include the Three Capes Track, Freycinet Circuit, and an anniversary present with a stay at Freycinet Lodge. 

At least with the July holiday, Alissa and I were able to find an alternative in the form of Electric Bikepacking the Southern Forests. While I generally love life here on the west coast, being stuck in Perth during what was a hellishly hot Summer meant there would be no hiking or biking alternative. As much as I agreed with the measures taken by the WA Government for the safety of the state's residents, I felt frustrated being stuck in a place with weather that is downright hostile to hiking during the Summer months, and I felt envious of friends and other hikers who were not tied to school holidays and thus did not have COVID fuck up their 2021 plans. And I felt particularly upset knowing that life circumstances meant we could not simply postpone our plans to 2022, with some aspects of our trip being a moment in our life that had now passed Alissa and I by. If 2018 was my greatest year of adventure, 2021 was it's antithesis. 

Of course, I know how lucky we have been in Australia. Western Australia in particular. Our experience of the pandemic was not the horror show of case numbers so high that people died waiting for ventilators, and we had the great fortune of a generally bipartisan respect for the medical advice that saved countless lives while we waited for the vaccines to be developed. But certainly the mental toll had an impact, and it took me quite a while to acknowledge how much the second half of 2021 had affected my mental health. 

Not being able to travel obviously entailed a curtailing of blog writing out of literally having nothing to write about, and I feel like the complete loss of momentum meant that I needed to either call an end to The Long Way's Better or make some serious changes if it was going to continue. Not writing for so long has given me the opportunity to ask myself many questions that I don't think I ever fully interrogated.  What do I want out of a hike? And what do I see as the purpose and future of the Long Way's Better?

The Bibbulmun Track is my hiking origin story, with my first serious hike being walking the section from Walpole to Denmark in 2003. While I consider long, multi-week trails like a thru-hike of the Bibbulmun Track a different genre of trail, the section hike served as the blueprint for the type of hiking I love the most - a multi-day destination hike of less than 8 days through spectacular scenery. To this day, the most pleasure I get hiking is when I get to walk a great multi-day trail in the 3-8 day range. I have no preference for scenery type; if I have a week of leave and I can go complete a 4-5 day hike or if over our Christmas break Alissa and I can use the extended time to either do a couple of shorter multi-day hikes or a longer 8 day stretch, those are the weeks I look forward to all year.

Which is not to say a great day walk can't be almost as satisfying, but I've always felt the fact they are generally easier to make means there are a lot more day walks of a mediocre nature that are less about the extraordinary and more about the everyday. There are certainly plenty of boring, unworthy multi-day walks too, but generally speaking, there are probably more day walks of an uninspiring nature than there are multi-days. Some people hike and see the scenery as a bonus, for some it is all about the challenge. For me the aesthetics are the primary draw; if it is not magnificent I don't see the point.

Which brings me to the purpose and future of the Long Way's Better. I started The Long Way's Better with the purpose of 'providing a photographic narrative of each of the trails we walk, while also giving a detailed breakdown of the track's grading under the Australian Walking Track Grading System'. The goal has always been to give people a realistic sense of what to expect on a trail, for better or worse. 

If the 2021 experience taught me anything, it is the value of my time, and I want to concentrate my efforts on the things that actually make me happy and are satisfying. Too often I've written up trails that I've thought were not worthy of anyone's time for the sake of creating content for the constant pipeline of relevancy and the 'encyclopedia' approach of being a go-to guide for trails. There is of course merit to that approach, but as a result I felt the blog was at times heading away from the type of hiking I actually wanted to do. 

Even before COVID I was finding the process burdensome. Even though I keep it 100 and I'm pretty honest in my appraisals of poor quality trails, I nevertheless felt like a fraud platforming a new write up of a mediocre trail in Perth hoping to get some page views when the average hiker was probably better off just sticking to the 5-8 great day walks in the Perth area (plus an additional handful of good ones with minor flaws) and just doing Eagle View or Kitty's Gorge for the 10th time rather than wasting their time on the bogan rubbish tip that is the Channel 10 Tower Walk or the burnt, scrappy Jarrah of the Carmel Walk just to do a 'new' walk. I actually have a few walks and rides that I've completed and photographed in the last two years that I will never be writing up, as I'm done with writing just to produce content. 

Beyond personal preference, on a practical level I just don't have the time for that anymore. You see, since 2018 Alissa and I have been trying for a baby. When I said earlier we put aside September 2021 for non-hiking purposes, it was because during that month we went through IVF, and we are very fortunate to have welcomed our son Miles into our family this past June. This is why we couldn't simply postpone our 2021 plans to 2022, and while having Miles has brought Alissa and I immense joy, the fact is it changes a lot about how and when we will be doing certain trips and how we live our day to day lives. 

Having a child really crystallised many thoughts I've had about the Long Way's Better; how can I spend nights during the week racing to quickly turnaround a subpar walk into a blog post I don't really care about when I should (and would prefer) to spend time with my family? I don't want to burden Miles or Alissa with having to spend weekends doing some obscure, unspectacular walk I'm doing out of a misguided obligation to review it when we could spend that time doing fun and enjoyable things together. Like any parent, I want to give Miles the world, and part of that is creating fun hiking and outdoors experiences as part of his childhood memories. 

So going forward, I will no longer be writing heaps of posts for the content mill. The encyclopedia approach is over. Instead, the Long Way's Better will really focus on being about destination trails and will be released in a more manageable 3-4 themed 'seasons' a year, either focusing on the very best day walks in a particular region or a multi-day walk that is worthy of being a hiking holiday. So I'm not chasing my tail, each season will be released in the next year, so I will have an average of nine months to put it together; ample time to work around the unpredictably busy schedule of my day job as a transport consultant and my duties as a father. When I'm not working towards one of that years' series, I'm gonna leave a lot of adventures and hikes unwritten too so I can just do Kitty's Gorge for the 10th time and be present in the enjoyable experience. 

And excitingly, a planned Munda Biddi End to End documentary (which I had to unfortunately postpone for two years due to being too ambitious for Alissa to be running support for with a newborn) has kickstarted the most significant upcoming change The Long Way's Better has ever undertaken. As of 2023, The Long Way's Better will transition to a channel on YouTube; some readers would have already seen a taste of this with the Bald Head video that was released to coincide with the reopening of the recently upgraded Bald Head Walk Trail in Torndirrup National Park. You can see that video below:

All-nighters editing experimental films and losing hours of work due to computer crashes for my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree had made me very hesitant to return to video (even though I do actually have an IMDB credit as an editor for an independent short film), however technology has really improved in stability, quality and price since my uni days in the mid 2000s, and having shot the first two seasons of episodes I'm really excited to share the results. 

Some videos will be redos of blog favourites, which I was feeling might be due a refresh anyway given the earliest blog posts are from 2015 and in some cases the walks have changed drastically, however it will also include new trails that have never appeared in the pages of The Long Way's Better. Each season will be tight and focused on trails that I think are really great/enjoyable rather than trying to cover too much ground for the sake of content. While the channel will be the main focus, the blog will continue in some form, likely focusing on overviews and guides to trails and as supporting documentation for the videos for those who want further information. 

I'm pleased to announce that Season 1 is due out in April 2023. Going back to basics, it is titled Day Walks of the Perth Outdoors and will focus on eight on the best day walk trails in the Perth region, while the eight episode second season (due out in June 2023) will focus on Days Walks of the Great Southern. A third season focusing on a multi-day trail will round out the three season run for 2023, but having not yet been filmed and having the COVID experience of trip cancellations, I'm hesitant to go too far into the details.

I want to thank everyone who has read the Long Way's Better for all these years. It means a lot to know that something I've written on my humble blog has inspired someone to go out for their own adventures, and I look forward to sharing this next phase of the Long Way's Better journey with you.