Blue Mountains Weekend – 21-22 December 2013

I spent a nice weekend up the Blue Mountains. Mosty walking with John and his son Jasper, and Keith. Chuin Nee (Jasper’s mum) was climbing nearby at the time with Chris an Susie, friends on a holiday from Germany.

Minnehaha Falls

The first place we visited was Minnehaha Falls at Katoomba. I had visited this place a few times when I was very young, and remembered it as being a nice place.

To get there, you have to drive through Yosemite, the suburb to the north of Katoomba. From the carpark, it is only about a 15 minute walk to the falls and on the way you pass a few nice picnic areas. The sign at the carpark had photos showing the falls many years ago and a more recent picture showing the pool at the bottom of the falls now silted up with sand. Previously it had been reported as being “bottomless”.

When we arrived at the bottom of the falls we found to our pleasant surprise that the pool had been flushed out – and was once again a very deep pool (reported depth 5.5 m). There were lots of other visitors during the day taking advantage of the pool for swimming. The water seemed very clean and it was certainly quite refreshing. Very pleasant! So pleasant that we found a shady place and stayed there most of the day.

Late in the afternoon, we walked out and met the others, grabbed a few pizzas and headed to Cahills Lookout at Katoomba for the sunset. Unfortunately it was a bit too cloudy in the west.

Narrow Neck from Cahills Lookout

We camp the night with Chris and Susie at Mt York and enjoyed sitting around the campfire of some visiting Newcastle climbers.

On Sunday, the climbers were going to Celebrity Crag at Blackheath, so we planned to meet them by walking down Centennial Glen and then around Colliers Causeway to Porters Pass (close to the crag).

This was a pleasant walk. We explored the small canyon at Centennial Glen and then the lower falls.

Jasper playing in the creek at Porters Pass

Then we noticed thousands of orange wasps swarming around in the rainforest below the falls. We saw a similar cloud of wasps in the cooler part of Porters Pass. These wasps were quite different to the Paper Wasps that commonly make nest under the overhangs.

None of the wasps stung us.

At Celebrity Crag, we joined up with Chuin Nee and left Chris and Susie to continue their climbing. But on the drive down the mountains, by the time we got to the lower mountains – the temperature was hovering on 40°C. So, without much discussion, we stopped at Glenbrook and spent a few hours in Glenbrook Gorge.

We walked down from the visitor centre, and ten minutes later arrived at the bottom. We walked down the gorge a bit to find a nice shady place to stop and swim. And once cooled off a bit – we continued down to a nice big pool.

More photos can be found on my website – Minnehaha Falls, Cahills Lookout, Centennial Glen to Porters Pass and Glenbrook Gorge.