Mothers' Day in the Mountains - 13th May

After a cold and very windy night, what a better way to help Trish celebrate Mothers' Day than a 5km hike down into the valley then back up the Giants Stairway. The little fan heated had trouble keeping up with the strong cold winds during the night. My approach was to put ear plugs in and sleep through all the shaking and buffeting of the tent, while Trish wondered if we were going to get blown away. I have progressively replaced all the shock cord on the tent and upgraded all the tent pegs to heavy duty so I was confident that we would survive the night. Our low temperature feather sleeping bags were assisted by long johns and beanie as we could not rely on the little fan heater to combat the cold.

Come morning we were still there but so was the cold wind, a nearby town had sleet in the early morning. A quick check on the internet weather revealed it got down to minus 5.8 after allowing for the chill factor of the wind. Undeterred but equipped with thermal underwear, gloves beanies and anything else warm we headed out on our hike. Fortunately as we got down further over the rim of the cliffs the wind was less and the rain forest was beautiful. As we progressed down pass waterfall view after waterfall view we started to peel off a few of the warm layers. It was a different world down there. Half way down there was a choice, turn right and walk another half kilometre to the scenic railway and go back up on that or turn left and do a 2 ½ to 3 hour walk to and then up the Giants Stairway. Not sure why it is the Giants Stairway as the stairs are normal size it is just that there are over 900 of them at a steep angle.

To my delight Trish decided on the longer more strenuous Giants Stairway. Partly helped by the fact that she did not want to pay the price that they wanted for a one way trip up, even though I said I would pay. Turned out it was a great choice. The path traversed around the face of the cliff with a few gentle ups and downs. All the while through wonderful scenic rain forest with the sound of all kinds of birds calling. As we finally arrived at the base of the Giants Stairway I took a photo of Trish, the look on her face says it all, she was not really looking forward to the climb with her gammy knee. As it turned out as long as we took regular breaks it was not that bad. Anyway you always want to stop to look out from the cliff face where the stairway clings, to see the scenery. Then every now and again we had to stop at a passing spot on the narrow stairway to allow people heading down pass. Well that was our excuse and it had nothing to do with the fact that we were puffing. But then most people were just doing the down trip and then up on the railway, not like us "Intrepids" going against the flow. When we reached the top it was "that wasn't too bad at all". On arrival back at the top a bit sweaty from the climb the wind and chill factor and a bit of rain was back. We took advantage of this for a short time to cool down then all the thermals went back on.

After the obligatory girlie looks in every gift shop available we used the bus tickets to take the easy way home. Tea was cooked in the open campers kitchen ( they are renovating the indoor bit ) chill factor was very high and you could feel the red wine getting colder and colder as you drank. A young American couple were sitting at the table in their feather sleeping bags eating their tea, but the "Intrepids" just ate and drank on. It was 7:30pm and the temperature gauge on my bike read 5 degrees without the chill factor added in. Good thing is that the wind has dropped and our trusty fan heater is making the tent toasty. Just had to ask Trish to turn it down a bit.

Tomorrow we head of in the cold of morning down off the Blue Mountains to the warmer climates of Sydney and more adventures.

Dave