The Blue Mountains

Starting the Descent of the Wentworth Falls Trail

At the top before the climb (Rhoda on the left from the UK and Simon from Munich)

The barefoot climbers - apparently the best way to climb AND experience life!

only one of more than a dozen waterfalls on this part of the trail

truly walking on cliff ledges!

you have to duck under giant rock ledges for parts of the trail too!

one of many, many views along the top circuit

just part of the trail!

the view from about one-third of the way down

Christian and I

quicksand!  or at least quick mud!  the barefoot trailblazers went all in!

Posing at the edge...yikes!

Face painted with aborigine yellow mud

the view from the top!

posing with the self timer at the end of the hike

The 3 Sisters in the blue fog just before sunrise

Getting ready to descend the Giant Stairway

There are crazy tree root formations all over Australia!

 

Looking really hard to see the sunrise through the clouds and fog!

So this is overdue, but I wanted to make sure I put up photos!  

I didn't get to do much research on the Blue Mountains back in the US before adding it as a "must do" priority on my trip nor did I find the time here in Australia to look more into it, so I'm not sure if this claim has been made already in guide books and what not, but to me the Blue Mountains are truly the green version of the Grand Canyon.  I pictured mountains actually, when really it's just a canyon...all hikes start by going down first and then back up.

I got to spend two great days in the Blue Mountains with a most awesome host and his semi-permanent "roommates" (one was from the UK and another from Munich).  I now know that these are a part of the "Great Dividing Range" mountain range that runs along the East Coast of Australia and this part is just a 2 hour drive or train ride outside of Sydney.  And if I recall they are named the Blue Mountains because of the blue haze from the Eucalyptus trees. On my agenda here were seeing the Three Sisters, climbing the Giant Stairway, and doing a canopy walk.  Again, very minimal research that went something like this: "Giant staircase? Where?"  I just knew I wanted to climb it!

Unfortunately, this was the first instance where the weather really affected my plans (mind you, this was 20 days into my time in Australia so this was hard for me to get upset about).  The first day though had fantastic weather and so upon my morning arrival to Katoomba (the name of the town) I was whisked on a crazy hike (I mean, tramp) into the "canyon" and back up it!  It was a breakneck pace, but also very spectacular with the gorgeous weather!  My host says he does this hike every weekend and he does it/did it barefoot.  

That night the fog rolled in and we stayed in drinking bottles and bottles of Australian wine, but still woke up early the next day with plans of watching the sunrise at Echo Point.  The only problem was that the cloud cover was a bit thick and we hadn't actually checked what time sunrise was so we stood around wondering and waiting "was that it?" because we couldn't quite tell at 6:30-7am if the sun was truly up yet!  This was followed by going back home to sleep and then waking up again to find it was raining.  Fortunately, the rain stopped just long enough for me to make my way to the Giant Stairway and 3 Sisters where I got to descend (and then climb back up) more than one-third of it (I counted 320 stairs of the 861 on the way back up!)  So you know, this staircase isn't your normal, American-built staircase.  Perhaps they don't need to worry about lawsuits here or Australians really are as adventurous as they say, because these stairs are STEEP!  But there wasn't time to do it all as I needed to get back home to make that night's dinner or should I say breakfast... I made banana bread french toast and profiteroles for dessert!

It was a great two days and certainly another giant highlight of the trip!