Blue Mountains Break

As Frank had to go to the Blue Mountains for 3 days for work I decided to take a few days off and go with him rather than be stuck at home for 4 days by myself. We managed to get cheap Qantas flights ($300) each and so set off on the Saturday (3 days earlier than Frank needed to be there) so that we could so some climbing. We had bought the most recent Blue Mountains Climbing guide and I had seen an advertisement in there for a nice quiet place to stay, and it was very reasonably priced too. It turned out to be very comfortable and had lots of character.

We climbed at Mt Piddington on Sunday, Mt Boyce on Monday and Narrow Neck on the Tuesday. We were very lucky with the weather, in fact it was quite warm in the sun on the Tuesday, and everywhere we went we had glorious views.

Frank led a climb called the eerie where the belay had the belayer sitting perched out on a rock which felt like you were in mid air, and then at the start of the second pitch you had to step out of a cave over a small bulge, it was quite exposed, but again with brilliant views.


A lot of the climbs were accessed via an abseil, not my most favourite thing, but the 100' slab at Narrow Neck also involved a walk along an eroded ledge. Where there are bands of claystone or shale in the sandstone these bands erode more quickly causing quite rapid erosion.


On Tuesday we moved from the rented house in Blackheath to Lilianfels in Katoomba which is where Frank's conference was, the luxury was a little hard to take, I managed but it was a struggle sometimes - to keep my eyes open that is! I managed to read three books in about the same number of days.


But it wasn't all reading and snoozing. I went for a long walk on the wednesday that was supposed to take about 3 hours but I spent so much time looking at plants, taking photos and going the long way around that I was out about five hours. The walk started by going down the giant staircase next to the three sisters, then along the valley and finally back up to the top of the cliff via the Furber stairs.


It was a great walk but I was rather disappointed in the amount of rubbish people had left behind and the extent of the graffitti on every accessible surface whether it was the rock alongside the track or the beautiful trees. On the upside I saw some magnificent trees and the bansia spinulosa were brilliant. The birds and bees were having a feast. Anyway, it was a great short break and much better than being at home without Frank :-))