In the end, mine was the only car available for this trip so the numbers were limited by car space and more would have attended otherwise. It was late on a cold and starry night that the party of four arrived at Newnes, setup tents and got into warm sleeping bags. When we woke in the morning our tents had frost on them. The frosty…
This turned out to be a very good walk in good weather, despite a rather chaotic start. And yet again, like for my other walks this year so far, more extraordinary luck with the weather. For a start, when my radio alarm went off it gave – nothing! Apparently the ABC station was offline for maintenance. Thus I…
This was one of the best wilderness trips I have done. The plan was to meet in the Southern Highlands and either packraft the Shoalhaven or go scrambling in the Budawangs if there was no water. As the long weekend approached, and we endured one of the biggest rain events for years it became clear that it would be packrafting. The minimum…
Sometimes persistence pays! And some mountains demand that you “get it right” in order to climb them. And this was very much the case with The Castle, in the wild and rugged Budawang mountains on the mid South Coast. It might be only 820m in height but has 700m of that to climb up, and is regarded as one of the harder mountains in NSW to tackle. On two…
Part 1: Baal Bone Gap to Newnes – ReduxThis trip was completed from Cape Horn to Newnes over three days. A group size of just two made us very efficient allowing success to make it all the way via Red Rocks. Photo highlights include rainbows, sunset and sunrise panoramas and the ‘Pagoda of Death’. Recent rains…
Most of met up at Central Station, and proceeded to Loftus, picking up Hiswaty along the way, and Cathie waiting at Loftus. Normally there is a gap of almost 20 minutes between the arrival of the train at Loftus, and the departure of the tram to National Park. This time the train was a few minutes late which whittled away at the time gap but we still thought that there was time to get a coffee at the cafe at Loftus and still get the tram. The cafe…
We had a leisurely Sunday start, leaving from the locked gate on Glenraphael Drive at 11.00. NPWS have erected a big sign to Castle Head about 700m further down the road, and we turned off, reaching Castle Head trig at 3km. The track continues less than 100m to the first anchor, a solid set of chains on four bolts. The first…
Everyone in the group were quick learners and abseiled correctly using a variety of descenders myself, Tony, April, Ted were using hydrobots while Savannah & Peter were using rappel racks. Just as we about to finish our last set of abseils on the 3 metre slab a small commercial group from the Australian School of Mountaineering came down so we negotiated with the guide which abseiling walls we would use to allow them to train their clients who were on a half day abseiling trip. We moved…
I took a punt on this Sunday being OK weather-wise even though there was a forecast if showers at some time. I was worried that maybe no one would join this walk, but 5 eventually did and got rewarded for it. And indeed I woke up to leaden skies and continual rain that morning. It didn’t…
Denali (Mt McKinley), Alaska 2016 aka “6 toes and 3 fingers later”Putting a team together was a long time in the making. At one point, it looked like we need to split into 2 groups, couple months later – just me and Jack. For training and preparation, I thought – more the merrier. We spread…