We drove into Morton from Milton after lunch on Wednesday and stopped at Pigeon House. Our return walk to the summit took 3 and a half hours and we had about five minutes view at the top before clouds swamped us. It was enticing, looking across to Byangee and the Castle, knowing we would finally be going up there. We saw three Lyrebirds on the way.
We make camp in the dark at Long Gully and the next morning my son couldn't find his camera so it was back up Pigeon House! We found his camera on the ground near a cave he'd investigated off the track. We'd had a small smattering of rain, but it was fine.
Friday morning we started our overnight to Cooyoyo Creek. The track was quite easy to follow though compact and sometimes pack grabbing and the tricky bits they talk about in the track notes I had appear to have been side tracked with only a short chain climb of perhaps five metres at the end of Kalliana Ridge.
We were the only ones going up that day and as I looked at the beautiful terrain in front of me I wondered if I should have got a plb. There were loads of wildflowers (as there were at Pigeon House) and a wombat and an as yet unidentified snake, huge, black, unhurried to get out of the way.
We had started out from Long Gully at 11am and as usual I thought we were further along the track than we were and had plenty of time for exploring and picture taking...
Got into Cooyoyo just before sunset, early enough to see the beautiful scene from the lookout at the edge of the campsite. Astonished to find a toilet, and glad - no finding other peoples paper creations...
It was a wild night with huge winds that hardly buffeted our old pea pod, a great tent.
After podge in the morning we set off for Monolith Valley. The track again compact with some deviations all heading in the same direction through rain forest pockets and Nibelung Pass across to Mount Cole and the track to Mount Owen. We continued to Seven Gods Pinnacles for lunch.
The route between the junction of Mount Cole and Owen is full of tracks and NPW are attempting to keep people to one track but it's difficult to know which one...
When we got back to the Castle saddle we had time for a quick look at the Castle. Not realizing we could have gone round Meakins Pass (there is a track up and around from the Castle saddle) we went way back to the tunnel track on the west side of the tail, climbing up a chimney and down a rope to meet the Meakins Pass track on the east side of the tail.
The Castle climb is quite okay until a pyramid shaped rock with a scary largish empty space under it and nowhere to attach a rope.
We had met up with some other walkers (younger, fitter, stronger, braver than me) and my son continued to the top with them. I stayed behind with another younger, fitter, stronger girl who wouldn't go up. My son showed me the photos from the top...
We shared the camp with ten others that night and the wind until bedtime when it quietened.
The next day we left Cooyoyo about 9am. On the way down we stepped over a log, raised in the middle, about a foot high, on which was a now familiar cube shaped wombat 'scat'. It's amazing how these short, fat, stubby creatures can perform the acrobatics they must to place their cubes in the most extraordinary places.
It was a good walk, a variety of landscape and walking. As the walk guide said we averaged 5km - woops
- 1km an hour in interesting terrain with an all body workout, the sort of walk I like. On the way back home we went to Bungonia and went down into Grill Cave. Now my son wants to be a Speleologist?
- On the track looking toward Mount Owen
- Near the top of Oakey Creek
- Panorama from Cooyoyo creek camp with Pigeon House and Byangee right
- Monolith Valley rainforest
- Mon Valley 1xsml.jpg (132.7 KiB) Viewed 6504 times
