It all began with a random phone call from an engineer friend – a Usyd research team is looking for someone to retrieve a high altitude research balloon that crashed in the Blue mountains. A moment later, a GPS coordinate was sent to my phone. I plotted it in, well, not too bad, just a few kms northeast of Mt Hay. After studying…
The group met at Blackheath station bright and early, a bit smaller than anticipated with 2 pulling out in the days leading up and 2 no shows. With a lot more space in the two cars than anticipated, we set off down the megalong road, managing to avoid some enormous potholes on the way. Arriving at…
We all met up at Strathfield and set off in Victoria’s car and mine for the drive to Mount Victoria. The railway station loos were used for our comfort stop. After a short break there we then set off for the start of the track which was once a narrow gauge oil shale rail line to the top of the escarpment above Hartley vale. This was…
Most of us met up wuth me at Wondabyne Station – except Natalia, who found herself in the front 4 cars of the train and couldn’t get off at this small station. She was unaware of the requirement to be in the last car, and also the usual recorded announcement about having to be in the last car was not played by the train guard. So Natalia…
The walk out along the ridge dividing the arms of the Boori is easy, long, and a bit boring. A rough footpad took us nearly all the way to the pass we’d used last week, and then it was a short vague bearing across a saddle and a few slabs to get to the next high point. With ropes considerably shorter than Jamieson (trust issues) we figured we’d aim at the obvious break marked on the map and at worst deal with the cliff not being as high there, although about 20m from where we first peered over the drop, Damon was able to connect two easy scrambles with a ledge, and we were down. We ended…
Given the short notice of the walk (just 36 hours) I was only expecting a couple to come. Yet we ended up with 6 walkers, and there were two others who enquired but decided not to proceed for health reasons. Most of us met up at Central for the train with Ségolène getting on at Strathfield (we met up with her at Wentworth Falls Station). From that…
After receiving advice several weeks ago from Alex Allchin that the Metropolitan Tunnel was flooded due to the constant heavy rain in March, which caused a date change for this walk, I decided that a pre-walk reconnaissance of the tunnel was advisable. Therefore on the Thursday (6th April) before the walk, I went to Helensburgh and found that the flooding in the tunnel had hardly receded. I also…
26 people had signed up for this trip before I managed to mark it as full, and then even after marking it as full on the walks programme the emails kept coming and a waitlist grew. The waitlist never got used though, because even by the morning of departure I had 23 confirmed participants. Martin and…
Again, very good luck with the weather, with a near cloudless sky and warm weather. Most of us met up at Woy Woy Station, with myself and Victoria meeting people off the 9.25am train. Unfortunately Cathy’s group coming up from Sydney in her car were running late, not reaching the station to 10am. Apparently she…
Ron and I to be were joined by two more, then four more, then ultimately nobody as the weather came and went through the week — but the fog lifted to blue skies as we dropped by the Mt Wilson campsite to say hello to Tony’s group before deciding on Serendipity and Water Dragon canyons. I don’t…