Blue Mountains

On Tuesday I visited the Blue Mountains near Sydney. While they are not really proper mountains (highest peak is only little over 1200 meters), the scenery in the area is still quite breathtaking. And as an added bonus the area is easily accessed from Sydney by train. I followed a bushwalking track I got from Wildwalks site, the walk passed near many of the main attractions in the Blackheath area. The total walk length was 15.6 kilometers, I completed the track in around six and a half hours.

I arrived to the small town of Blackheath quite early in the morning and started heading towards the wilderness. After several days of heavy rains the weather was finally playing nice and apart from some clouds and few drops in the morning the day was sunny and warm. After walking quite a way from the railway station I arrived at the first proper part of my planned track, the Grand Canyon. To my dismay there was a plaque stating that part of the track was closed for repairs and there was no realistic way around either. I decided to follow the track anyway, I could always backtrack when I hit the closed off session as this was the part of the track I was most interested in beforehand.

Grand Canyon didn’t disappoint, after descending quite a few winding stairs I first arrived at Neates Glen, a small valley with a creek running in the middle. After walking for a while longer I entered the Grand Canyon itself, the path followed one of the sides of a deep canyon with a small river running at the bottom. After passing through a short tunnel and next to several waterfalls the path winded down the bottom of the canyon and crisscrossed across the river several times. Due to recent heavy rains this section was quite challenging, many of the stepping stones were partially underwater and at times it was bit hard to figure out where the path went next.

After getting my feet wet several times I finally got the end of the canyon and started the long climb up to the Evan’s Lookout. This part of the track was supposed to be closed for repair work, luckily the gate at the bottom was open and the workmen said it was ok to pass through. In practice they probably thought that it was a bad idea to send a crazy tourist back through the flooded canyon.

From Evan’s Lookout I got my first view of the Grose Valley several hundred meters under the cliffs. The cliff face drops around 200 meters vertically and then descends more gently to the forested valley below. With the sun in the sky the view was quite breathtaking.

From Evan’s Lookout I followed the Cliff Top track which offered some excellent views down to the valley. There are also several waterfalls on the way dropping from the cliff tops down to the valley. This section of the walk offered some great views and was quite easy too apart from some really steep steps near the end.

This part of the track ended at Horseshoe Falls and I started following the Pope’s Glen track away from Grose Valley and back towards Blackheath. The track follows the Pope’s Glen Creek quite closely and while the scenery here wasn’t quite as impressive as the earlier sections, it still had some really nice parts. There was also a small beach along the way, but the water in the creek was way too shallow and cold for swimming.

The path started to climb up and finally I arrived back to the streets of Blackheath. At this point I noticed that the next train back to Sydney was about to leave in a few minutes. Despite my best efforts (I still had some energy left for running!) I still missed the train. Unwilling to wait two hours for the next train I took the station attendants advice and took the train to Lithgow at the very edge of Sydney’s public transport system. After a short stop at Lithgow the train turned back towards Sydney, it was the same train I would have had to wait for anyway so there was no real loss. And there were also some great views down the valleys along the way.

This was an excellent day trip with some spectacular scenery and views. I’m heading back to Melbourne sometime next week already, but if I have a chance I might go for another walk in the mountains to explore some more of the sights. Assuming the weather behaves that is, at the moment it is more or less constantly raining in the Sydney region.

• 2012-11-24 Lonsdale Arches