KatieTheKat

Some time ago, I stumbled upon and subscribed to a mailing list run by the Sydney University Bushwalking Club (SUBW, pronounced "sub-wuh", I think). It seemed a good place to find out about and participate in some hiking (bushwalking) trips, and to meet people too.

Last week, I finally had free time coinciding with an overnight backpack proposed by one of its members. It was thus that I found myself biking to Central Station with a pack on my back to meet up with Chris and Tom at 6am on a Saturday morning.

The plan was to drive in towards Baal Bone Gap, making it as far as we could on the rough road and mountain biking the rest of the way to the trailhead if that wasn't very far. From there, we would have a short bush bash in to Pantoney's Crown. We would spend the night on top then do some further exploring on our way out the next day. The forecast was not entirely in our favour: possibility of some thundershowers and scattered showers on Saturday and Sunday. It didn't sound too severe, so we had decided to go ahead with the plan.

Things were relatively uneventful until we reached the turnoff to the fire trail road that would take us towards the gap. There we had two options. Option number one, based on the topo map, took a lower route and followed some swampy territory. Sure enough, we checked it out and it looked a little soggy (see picture number 1). So we decided to go check out option number 2. This option took to high ground and therefore was likely to be drier. The problem was how quickly the road took to higher ground, as we saw when we scouted it out. A steep and deeply furrowed route led up a series of sandstone ledges, and made that puddle seem suddenly quite inviting.

The going up the road was slow. The first puddle was far from being the only one, and the consideration that rain was in the forecast was heavy on our minds as we drove through a foot or more deep pool whose banks looked like it could hold much more. Nevertheless, the idea of biking through similar puddles while laden with packs was not particularly appealing, so we pressed on. Careful manoeuvering and only one little push got us and the car up to the junction with our alternate option, 6km into the bush. And there we stopped. The next hill was just a little too mean-looking for our 2WD to handle. And after all, we had brought our bikes all this way - why not use them?

Mountain biking with a pack is not as difficult as we feared. After chickening out and walking down a couple of near-vertical seeming hills, I had a really good time zooming along through the woods. The road had a gentle descent broken by little humps that made my stomach jump as I flew over them. I began to remember why I used to enjoy mountain biking so much.

But soon, we were at the Gap. The bikes we chained together against a tree, well-hidden from the road and the picnic area. We topped up our water bottles at the 'pressure reducing station' and caught a glimpse of our destination across the valley.

Based on my last bush bashing (bushwhacking) trip, I was prepared for a struggle, for painfully beaten legs, for ups and downs, and for bugs galore. If this was what I had hoped for, then I would have been rather disappointed. Instead the bush bash was a bludge [an easy task; a job or task which entails no work]. We loped along the top of the ridge amongst sandstone pagodas and stopped to ogle the stunning views of Pantoney's Crown and the tree-filled valley below. After lunch, we dropped down into the valley and cut across to the base of the cliffs that gave the crown its distinction. This is where things got a little trickier. From other route descriptions, we understood the route to be near the southern tip, quite exposed, but supposedly obvious. The hour of searching and considering rather treacherous climbing that ensued proved at least one of these descriptors to be false. Finally we found it, a short distance farther towards the west side than our previous searches had taken us. As day turned to evening and the sun that had shone upon us was clouded over, we emerged at the top of a fun rock scramble atop Pantoney's Crown.

We passed by two groups - a pair who we had been leap-frogging throughout the day and a larger group that had come up from the other end of the crown. They had all camped in a pleasant, sheltered area in the trees, but we decided to press on to find a spot of our own. What we found was a perfect clifftop home, where from my tent I could gaze northward along the crown and down into the valley. Building a fire was a snap with dry leaves and branches scattered all about (though it was a good thing I had brought matches!). Happy to be outdoors in such a lovely setting, we chatted and gazed at the flames snacking on Brie on "bickies" (courtesy of Tom) until our stomachs called for dinner.

Since it was a one-nighter and I hadn't brought a billy along on my trip to Australia, I had opted for a tin of beans for dinner. [Allow me to insert just a short rant about beans in this country here, if I may. True beans in my mind are the sort with molasses or maple syrup, not the sorry substitutes drowning in tomato sauce. Yet here, though there is no shortage of beans, with at least 3 or 4 brands readily available in your local supermarket, molasses beans are entirely unrepresented. Just tomato beans, tomato beans, tomato beans. Heinz has made some feeble attempts with beans in chili sauce and the pricier beans with garlic and onion in tomato sauce (it was these I slurged for on the trip and I must admit they weren't bad), but still the options are shockingly few. Still, beans are good and at least here they are cheap, so beans are still one of my staples. As I was telling Calvin recently though, nowhere have I seen beans to compare with those in Quebec, and if I could I would have all of my beans imported from there.] To go with my beans, Chris supplied me with some extra veggies - green beans and a brussels sprout in fact. Beans and beans. And a bagel toasted over the campfire. Mmm.

The conversation was very educational. I learned about what a rort it was for Tom to discover that 'rort' does not appear in an ordinary English dictionary. I was also warned of the dangers of the drop bear, which my 20 questions have only revealed to be a gum tree-dwelling creature presumably larger than an apple. Tom and Chris didn't reckon I'd find any on the ridge, however.

I had a great night's sleep which went a long way towards making up for the 4-hour long naps of the two preceeding nights. When I awoke, it was to the sound of raindrops. I was glad I had capped my Canadian Tire tent with its little hood before going to sleep, and I was happy to find that it did quite a good job of keeping out the rains. And the rain. and the rain. A thunderstorm rolled in and pounded upon us as I stayed in my tent and Chris and Tom huddled under their flies (Tom with impermeable rock upslope from him huddling a little moreso than Chris). A few small hailstones bounced off the rocks. When the storm subsided, we emerged with full water bottles and had some breakfast. And then the next one came so we found refuge again. And then a pause, and then a lengthier downpour.

Given the weather, it was not hard a hard decision to opt for hiking back along the road through the valley rather than exploring across to the clifftops on the other side. We had started to worry in earnest about how we would get the car out again - either through heightened puddles or down that rollercoaster of a hill. Well, we would have to cross that bridge when we came to it. Ah, if only there were a bridge!

So we set off. Made our mark in the log book at the summit and quickly found the narrow crack in the cliff that was the route down the northern end of the crown. We had been curious about the 'hole in the rock' through which we were to pass our packs, as described in other trip reports. It turned out to be more like a little tunnel; the 'hole' description made me think of Monte Pertuso in Italy, which was a different feature altogether. Once down the cliff section, it was navigation time. A number of ridges fanned out from the crown, some leading to less road walking than others. Though Tom carried a GPS in his pack, he and Chris decided to put their compass skills to the test instead. Since three peering at the map was a little tricky, I contented myself with listening to their reasoning concerning which ridge we were on and which knoll lay where on the map. Three hours or so after our start, it was decided we could be just about anywhere (on a fairly constrained chunk of map), and the GPS was pulled out. Seems we missed our ridge somewhere along the way and would have to aim for a point about 2km back on the road from where we had hoped to end up. But I think the detour was well worthwhile, because our new route led us through an impressive colony of 'black boy' trees and led to the sighting of at least 4 kangaroos! And as we descended towards the grassy fields in the valley, the sky brightened through the clouds and a chorus of birds serenaded us on our journey.

It was after we hit the road that the mood got a little more serious. First we were swarmed by flies in the marshy fields - both Chris and Tom ended up with surely more than a hundred each hitching a ride on their packs. I'm not sure why they were not so attracted to mine. Finally the flies abated when the rains began again. No thundershowers this time, but a good solid downpour that lasted for the whole of the trudge up the neverending climb from valley bottom to clifftop at Baal Bone Gap. Though I at least was rather hungry, the idea of stopping for lunch to be further drenched was not appealing and thus forgone. To think that the previous day we had been concerned about running out of water! All the time as we continued our march through Stage One, we feared the biking and particularly the driving stage in our journey that was yet to come.

There would have been no need to hide the bikes from the beginning if the conditions had been as we found them back at Baal Bone. The cloud was upon us and only allowed one to see a short distance into the trees before all was obscured by white and gray. The good news was that we were as wet as we could get already, so splashing through puddles on the bikes was hardly a concern.

As it turned out, Stage Two (biking) was not half as trying as we had anticipated. Sure, it was a struggle to push a bike up a couple of the steep slopes we had come down (and vaguely reminiscent of my park biking experiences of my last trip), but most of the road was fully rideable. I could have done without getting that eyeful of mud, however.

On our way back towards the car, we ran across a couple of four-wheel-drivers. Each one of them was as big as at least two of us, with a belly that I would think would get in the way of the steering wheel. Though they had climbed out of their tinted-windowed trucks and stood in their matching leather boot-style shoes to chat with us, one had left his trusty engine running. Perhaps that was to keep the stereo going for his wife and kids who were presumably inside. We asked for some advice on the road with the hill, and were plenty was given, though it left us with hardly more knowledge and certainly no closer to a decision than where we had begun. They were nice guys though, in their way, and clearly concerned about our chances, as they instructed us to stop in at a 'servo' on the highway once we had gotten out. If we hadn't made it, they would come back to find us. They also gave us some tips on feathering the handbrake when attempting the hill in order to avoid locking any wheels.

Well, we made it to the junction and the car, and scoped out the situation. The two guys in the smaller car than ours had left already and their tracks indicated that they had opted for the hill route over the puddles. We decided to follow them, and every metre we covered without running into them gave us greater hope that we would manage to make it out after them. Though that hill still had me awfully worried. With stopping to probe puddle depths and bottoms with sticks at regular intervals and choosing lines through stony sections, it took us a good deal of time to make it 3.5 km from the junction. And it was here that we saw the little green golf coming back towards us. Not a good sign.

The guys (Tom and Kim, as we discovered later) had made it through a harrowing journey all the way to that monster hill at the end where after some consideration, they decided it was not worth the risk. And it must have looked pretty bad for them to go back the 6km to the junction in order to face whatever lay ahead on the puddled road we had all come in on. I was thankful that we turned around and followed them.

At least now that we had had some practice and could remember which side of the puddle to choose, it seemed like we were back at the junction in no time. Our car pulled ahead to brave the way down "long swamp road", as it was named. It was almost a let down, and even a bit of a rort, that the drive out was almost wholly uneventful. Puddles that we had pictured being 3 feet deep were no worse than they had been on the way in. When finally we came to the one that we had been fearing ever since driving through it the day before, we were stunned to see that the level had not risen at all. A quick investigation showed a drainage furrow on the side of it which explained the perfectly manageable depth. Our visions of bailing out the road with bean cans and billies were not to be realized.

The last little twist to this tale came when we stopped at the service station as we had promised to the 4wders. As it turns out, they had been through before us and had took it upon themselves to go so far as calling the police. They had left instructions that if we didn't turn up by 7pm, the police were to come out looking for us. Good thing that we remembered to make the stop!

All in all, a grand trip. My thanks to Chris and Tom for inviting me along on this weekend adventure. Pictures can be found in my gallery here: http://gallery.antiflux.org/v/thekat/Kat_Outdoors/thekat-Outdoor2005/pantoneyBushBash-2005/

kat.