Sunday, March 15, 2009

Hollow Mountain to Mt Stapylton to Flat Rock

We went for a great walk last Monday but as I am now being rather lazy I have stolen Sean's write up of the trip :-)


We did mention to Sean that we wanted to rediscover a walk we had done with the boys many years before from Hollow Mountain to Stapylton and Darryl and Sean knew there were a couple of geocaches along there and as Sean hadn't been over and around Stapylton and neither had Darryl the four of us teamed up for the adventure and headed out on the Monday.
Wisely Darryl and Sean decided against bringing kids and were glad for it. Most of the guide books recommend no kids under 10 along the walk. There were several places where a misstep could have proven fatal.
The walk begins along the marked Hollow Mountain track and we decided to head right to the top of the official track before starting off on the walk to Stapylton via the wind caves. The track starts off flat and easy then gradually climbs up until you are along the base of a red overhanging cliff, it then bears left up and along the base of cliff for a short distance before turning right and following a boulder strewn ramp fairly steeply and along exposed cliff edges. on the way to Hollow Mtn


The track then turns gradually left and onto an open rock slope with a large rock block with cave windows on the left and a large wall that runs perpendicular to the track further up and back. The rock block contains the mutli-level wind caves which we returned to after proceeding up to the right following the yellow arrows marking the maintained track to the top of Hollow Mountain past a large bouldering cave and around for some excellent views.


view from Hollow Mtn
We then came back down to the rock block and went around to the downslope side (east) for easy access to the wind caves and worked our way up them until you could climb no higher and then walked out over a stone bridge to a window that lets you climb out and onto the top of the block. inside Hollow Mtn


Once we were on top we worked our way SE along the top of the ridge scrambling up and down the easiest route we could find which involved some steps over very deep chasms and being along exposed cliff edges in a few places. Before you run out of ridge you have to bear east a bit to pick up the main ridge which you can see to the SE. Once on the main ridge the going gets easy until you come across a very deep 1.5 m wide chasm which by the looks of it some people jump or climb over, but we decided to loop around to the east by climbing down an easy slope and then around south following some rock cairns. We then climbed up some boulders to gain access to the main ridge on the other side of the chasms. Once back on the ridge the route is quite easy along the rock and there were a number of interesting rock pools that would have been enticing on the warm 30 degree day if they hadn't been dried up from the drought.
A few hundred meters along the ridge we came upon the largest chasm that frames the north side of the Taipan Wall. In the north wall of the chasm we discovered the cave that housed the geocache we were after just a few metres down from the top but hidden from view from above. Sean writing in the geocache log book. Sean updating log book

A gorgeous spot.


sweaty
After spending some time at the cave we then proceeded south east along the chasm for 200 m until we found a place to cross and work our way up to the top of Mount Stapylton. The views from up there were very impressive.


stapylton


We then followed the red arrows off of the summit down to official track summit where the new yellow arrows brought us down past another couple of caves and bird rock. Frank on bird rock


We then crossed flat rock and down to the Mt. Zero carpark.
All in all, an excellent adventure and day.


Below is the Every Trail map that Frank generated from his GPS on the day.

Hollow Mountain, Stapylton, Flat Rock Loop
Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

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