10-11 November 2012
A week after my hike through Royal National Park, I headed west with two friends from Uni, Louise and Ben, to the Blue Mountains National Park. A few days beforehand we were talking over lunch and decided to do a one-night camp out in the mountains - which I had been to before, but either just driving through or staying at a hostel in Katoomba. But I love camping and really hadn't ever gone backcountry camping - especially since I am terrible at starting fires or doing any sort of reasonable cooking over them - so I typically just camp out of my car...
We drove up into the mountains on a Saturday, stopped in Katoomba to pick up some last minute groceries, and then parked our car near the Golden Stairs and started hiking. The thing about the Blue Mountains is that to do any bushwalking through them, you have to descend from the rim of the valleys along very steep paths, often involving steps hewn into the strong sandstone or very steep metal steps. Going down wasn't too rough, really - at least for Ben and myself. Louise's knees started acting up, though, which plagued her the rest of the trip.
Once down in the bottom of the valley, the walk is long, but fairly flat. The path took us through gumtree forests with an undergrowth choked with ferns that blocked the sunlight giving us a fairly nice cool walk. There's the saying, though, that what goes up must eventually come down, and well, the converse is true: what goes down must eventually come up. Clearly, a place called Mount Solitary is not going to be at the bottom of a valley and soon, our flat, valley-bottom walk ended and we began to climb back up through a gumtree forest with a more open undergrowth and flowering waratah - the state emblem for New South Wales. Ben said he'd seen koalas here before, and you could definitely see evidence that they live here (aka poop on the trail), so for the next hour or so, I was straining my neck up into the trees to see if I could catch a glimpse of my first koala. We had no such luck, and with a strained neck, we reached our lunch spot at the bottom of the trail ascending Mount Solitary.
After lunch, our arduous climb up a fairly steep ridge, over boulders, between rocks, and alongside sheer drop-offs began. Louise's knees were not helping her out much, but we didn't really have a choice to turn back at this point. I grabbed her pack to ease her carrying load and slowly but surely, we reached the top, stopping at a few flat lookout points along the way. But the trek to the campsite wasn't over yet. We were at the top of Mount Solitary (a plateau, really) but the campsite was on the other end of it and a little ways down the other side! But at least the hiking here was flat.
Soon enough, though, and with only another hour or two of daylight, we reached the campsite and chose our spot underneath an overhanging rock ledge nestled down in a little valley. Even though it was kind of gray and threatening all evening, a lot of hikers run into trouble here because they don't bring enough water and expect to find some they can purify once they reach the campsite. Ben had hiked this area extensively and showed me a creek bed, that even during dry spells, usually has some water left in it, but this time around it was bone dry. Good thing we had plenty of our own water with us!
We dropped our belongings off at the campsite and walked a few hundred metres to a rocky lookout facing south toward Lake Burragorang. Like all areas in the Blue Mountains we were flanked by high and steep sandstone cliffs jutting up out of the eucalypt forest below. The sun was setting and you could really get a sense of why this area is called the Blue Mountains - oils in the eucalyptus leaves gives off a haze that appears blue in the right light. We sat there for a while, taking photos, watching birds fly around the trees and branches growing out of the cliff walls below us. Eventually we headed back to the campsite where Ben and Louise started a fire, but then Ben and I (Louise's knees wouldn't let her) walked to the opposite side of the plateau and looked north toward Katoomba and the Three Sisters - a very famous and sacred Aboriginal rock formation on the opposite side of the Jamison Valley. We found a few more rocks to climb for an even higher view of the cliffs and valleys shrouded in mist, but soon headed back to camp before it got too dark.
The next morning we woke up fairly early and I took the chance to catch the sun rise over the mountains. I was hoping the valleys would be filled with morning mist like the year before, but I was out of luck this morning. Nonetheless, there were some pretty spectacular views here. Back at camp, we packed things up, but took Louise over to the rock ledge facing the Three Sisters Ben and I were at the night before, and after a few more photo ops, went back to our bags and started the trek back out.
Once again, getting down the bouldery slopes off of Mount Solitary proved to be slow-going, but we safely made it down, all accounted for into the open eucalyptus forest. Louise insisted Ben and I go ahead of her since we also wanted to climb the shorter Ruined Castle - a big rock outcrop rising off the valley floor. The climb up to the Ruined Castle was rough. It was a lot steeper than it looked, but we eventually made it to the rocks at the top and followed a group of 20 senior citizens (at least in their mid-60s for sure!) up the side of the outcrop to the top where we all took turns climbing up to the highest point. Now, I don't know what is it, but I am terrified of heights like this. It's not that I'm unsure of my footing or looking down, but I am just afraid that I'll do something stupid and loose my balance and fall off the rocks. Getting up to the top of the outcrop was fine, but it was getting from my knees onto my feet that really did me in. But after seeing these old fogies climbing up there like it was nothing, I was determined to do it - no matter how ridiculous I looked in my photos! Well, I did it, and I did look ridiculous, but what can I do about that now?
Ben and I finished up at the Ruined Castle and we made it back to the valley floor just as Louise strolled up to us - good timing, eh! We stopped for a wee bit of lunch and had fun taking photos of a curious little bird who was scrounging around for snacks. Louise lured the bird pretty close to her hands with some broken crackers, and the bird was calm enough to give it a go...once, but he he was too suspicious otherwise and nothing more than a blur in most of my photos.
Soon enough we were back at the base of the Golden Stairs and the long climb back up to the car. Again, Louise insisted we go ahead of her so we each took our own pace getting up to the top. Ben is an avid hiker and reached the car well before me and we waited a little while longer for Louise, but we all made it in one piece and all very eager to take off our hiking boots. Overall, it was a great weekend with awesome people in a beautiful national park. Can't go wrong with that!
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