Avoiding the wind! (7-8 July 2018)
With Friday off work I was keen to make use of my three day weekend however I didn’t get any takers for a full three days of activities. On Friday afternoon we hatched a plan with Toni & Smiffy to go out to Red Rocks for the weekend. I was all packed to go and then Tom & I headed into Blackheath about 6pm. Two minutes out of the car to go to the grocery store had me doubting the sense in our plan! The wind was bitterly cold, I think the BOM had the apparent temperature at -5°C and that was only the early evening. I’m not sure how much convincing Toni & Smiffy needed but it didn’t take that long to get agreement via text message to convert plans into day trips.
I’d been wanting to do Orang-Utan Pass for a while but Tom had been resisting my suggestions. It seemed like a good option for the day as it was on the East side of the ridge keeping us out of the 50-60km/h westerly wind. Unfortunately Toni’s gaiters ended up at our house instead of in the car so she bravely forged on with bare legs despite knowing we were likely to encounter a fair bit of lawyer vine. I didn’t take a heap of photos as the bulk of the day was either bush-bashing or else on the Grose Valley track to Perrys Lookdown which we’d walked several times recently.
Smiffy photographing Tom crossing the crux of the route
Tom carefully easing his way across the small ledge
The logbook. A bit more traffic in 2018 compared to previous years (average seemed to be about 1 trip per year since it was placed in 1990)
There was still plenty of route-finding to come
Toni at the one spot we used the tape
We were happy to get back to the house and get the fire roaring. Sparkling red, cheese, and later on a delicious chocolate mud cake made for a pleasant evening inside out of the wind.
The next day the incentives for getting moving weren’t high as we could hear the wind buffeting the house. Eventually we settled on Jugglers Canyon since Toni hadn’t done it, and Tom thought it would be out of the wind.
Toni on abseil
For the record Juggler still gets plenty of wind.
The snaparazzi!
Toni abseiling
We took a different route out from our usual one. I was quite surprised to find some handrails!
Tom handrailing 🙂
Toni coming up the handrail section
Since we’d started quite late it was unsurprising that it was well and truly lunchtime by the time we got back to the cars. We had lunch in Katoomba, the enthusiasm for post-lunch activities was limited so we called it a weekend at that. A satisfying one despite the bout of softitis that kept us inside overnight 🙂