Feature:Blue Mountains Day Hike, Grand Canyon loop
28 May 2005

The Blue Mountains region cradles the Sydney basin to the west and represented an impassable sheer wall of rock for the first thirty years or so of European settlement. The land and its formations here are the remnants of mountains once as high as the Alps-- compared to these canyons and foothills, the Appalachian mountains of the US are children. Yet, the cliff face that proved so difficult for the first Europeans to find a way past still prevents the expanding development of greater Sydney from crawling too quickly through this wilderness. Imagine a protected wilderness the size of Yellowstone less than a 90-minute drive from New York City, and you'll start to understand the relationship of the city of Sydney to the six or eight national parks that make up the Blue Mountains region.

The towns of Blackheath and its neighbor Katoomba sit at the top of the sheer cliff face of the Blue Mountains region, so of course many of the walking tracks go down the cliff... and, inevitably, have to come back up. Walking down may sound like an easy endeavor, but it's a lot harder than it looks!

The walking track that Jonathan had heard good things about did not disappoint. At the bottom of the "Grand Canyon" the cliffs did indeed tower 100m above us, just as the description promised. Far out of the reach of any wheeled vehicle, the track wound through the narrow canyon along the creek, and underneath rock overhangs carved out by ancient waters.

At one point we walked in the creek bed itself, but a little later on we noticed that the creek had disappeared and been replaced by a deep dark crevasse. At times, the sunlight would fall just right so that we could see the crevasse dropped at least another 15-20m next to the walking track, but we knew that it actually ran much deeper than that. More experienced explorers than we might hook up rappelling equipment to go "abseiling" (as they call it here), but we were warned that it was a tough go even for experienced abseilers.

At Beauchamp Falls, D and Jonathan climbed up a big rock to enjoy the secluded little valley, while Chad stayed on the ground to explore the rocks and the outflowing stream.

Although we passed other hikers on the loop trail, we saw no other bushwalkers at the falls. The shaded valley was particularly nice in that it was cool without being cold. As the shadows of the cliff wall grew longer, though, we knew it was time for the long and difficult climb back up to the top, before it was dark for the night. So, regretfully, we clambered off our perch on the rock, shouldered our daypacks, and set out back to the fork in the track, this time to take the other way.

Between the falls and the stairs up to Evan's lookout, we crossed some a stream that had a bright red "yabbie" in it-- a freshwater crayfish, possibly edible. This little guy was so red he looked like he's already been cooked, but we watched him for a while and he was definitely still alive. How he managed to survive predators with such a garish color on we had no idea.

Finally, huffing and puffing and sweating, we made it back to the top of the cliff, to Evan's Lookout. There's a carpark at Evan's Lookout, so the place was swarmed with weekending Sydneysiders all enjoying the view... unsweaty and untired, decidedly unlike us. Evan's Lookout is one of those views that for which the Blue Mountains region is famous, and we certainly enjoyed the treat after our long climb up. But it was a whole different world to get down in the canyon and see it up close... and that was worth the sweat and the soreness.