Blue Mountain Bushwalk

Having spent a wonderful week exploring Sydney we made our way back to the wilderness. Shortly after watching the Packers win on superbowl "Monday" (somehow that felt stranger than celebrating Christmas a day early) we took a bus into town, rented a car, and headed east for the Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains get their name due to a haze that often surrounds them giving them a "blue" appearance. They only rise to about 3500 feet (slightly higher than the summit of Snoqualmie Pass) and are more reminiscent of canyons and rock formations than what we consider as mountains back home. However this doesn't mean they aren't worthy of exploration.

We stayed in a nice little town called Katoomba. The hostel we stayed at was one of the nicest so far and within walking distance to the trailhead. 

After a quick breakfast Tuesday morning we packed a lunch and hit the trail. We decided on a four hour loop hike that would take us along the edge of cliffs, down a 900 step stairway, around the Three Sisters (a series of three rock spires), past Katoomba Falls, and over to a tourist attraction called Scenic World. 

We started off walking along the cliffs edge and made our way to Echo Point lookout which featured our first view of the Three Sisters, the iconic rock formation of the Blue Mountains. Echo Point is also a main tour bus stop and sure enough was quite crowded. We lost the crowd pretty fast when we descended the Giant Stairway, 900 steep steps down from the lookout to the valley floor. From here we hiked through brush and trees toward Katoomba Falls. With less people and more trees we managed to spot a kookaburra, cockatoo, blue tongue lizard, and a bird unknown to us that looked like an all black peacock. We had lunch at the falls and then made our way to Scenic World.

We didn't exactly know what to expect from Scenic World and were surprised by a half hour boardwalk through the rain forest featuring relics from the coal mining era of the region. Luckily, Scenic World operates both a cable car and railway to trolley their visitors back and forth. For a small fee we were able to take the world's steepest railway (52 degrees!) up out of the brush and walk back to our hostel. Pretty darn good day.