Attendees: Me, David and Denis

Fri 10th:

With everything finally sorted, I left work grabbed some things from my Sydney home and then caught the train to Hazo to get a lift back with dad. I had about half an hour to pack a light weight bag for tomorrows long walk.

Dad dropped me off in Hartley at the Jenolan Caves road turnoff. Rowena picked Denis up from Katoomba and then me. We met David at Jenolan from where Tabitha was kind enough to give us a lift to Kanangra walls. It was quite late and we had to go quite slowly to avoid hitting any wildlife.

Once we where finally there we thanked Tabitha and headed to Dance Floor cave where we would be spending the night. I foolishly didn’t bring a fly or sleeping bag and consequently barley got any sleep!

Sat 11th:

From about 2am I became quite restless and started rolling around for a bit. I soon gave up on sleeping and got several hours of reading in before the others woke.

We left an hour and a bit after sunrise and enjoyed the views along Kanangra walls. We continued past Craft Walls which I hadn’t been to since my first Tuglow SUSS trip and hadn’t been on top of since a trip with CWBW a LONG time ago.

We continued at a good pace over High and Mighty and Stormbreaker resting at the top of Cloudmaker which I think is the furthest I have been along this route.

We continued to Dex Creek where we where pleased to find running water to replenish our dwindling supplies. We then continued north-north-west which we thought looked like the easiest way to continue… we followed an animal pad for some time and wasted about an hour searching for the track on the wrong ridge.

After listening to Denis and heading back to a cairn on a cool piece of conglomerate we picked up the trail and continued on our way.

The walk down Strongleg Ridge was quite steep and the goanna distraction very welcome as it gave my knees a rest. They where beginning to feel like someone was sliding a knife under my kneecap… and we where only half way.

We had a fairy long rest on the Cox’s River and then after a quick look for a fancy hut continued along the river (seeing another two goannas) before the climb up Yellow Pup Ridge which had a track with quite a number of switchbacks (at least going up didn’t hurt my knees!).

Once we got to the top of Mt Yellow Dog the going was much easier and I also seemed to notice lots of wild flowers… maybe I was getting tired and walking slower (??).

We rested again at Mobbs Swamp which had almost completely dried up, so no water for us 😦

Shortly after we ran into a group of three (making the total people seen 5 – we passed a couple near somewhere before Mt Strongleg) who where planing to camp at the swamp – they where also hoping to find water there. We warned them that they may not be so lucky.

I was happy when we reached the Medlow Gap service road as I thought we where getting close to Narrow Neck. But unfortunately it was a lot further to Tarros Ladder than I was expecting. Up the next hill I came very close to standing on a black snake which had a flat section behind its head like a cobra.

By the time we where walking along the Narrowneck firetrail the sun had set.

We still had about 17km? to the gate and a further 3 or 4 to the road. This went aggravatingly slow and I got slower and slower as the pains in my knees got worse. By the end I resorted to walking down the hills backwards!

We waited at the sealed road and got a cab to the station. I got the train to Medlow where my car was waiting. Too tired to drive I went the Shanks’s and tried to sneak onto the balcony to sleep which didn’t work out quite as planned…

The following day a lot of relaxation was in order.