Rachel Grindlay

Day 1: Tayan Pic
John organised permission for us to access Tayan Pic through one of the private properties surrounding it’s base. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a 750 ascent & descent in one day (well, I probably did at Lake Macquarie Rogaine but that was over a series of ups and downs rather than one go).

The initial sections were pretty good from a scrub perspective. Tom picked his timing though – he elected to stop about half way up – almost as soon as he left us the scrub turned baaad. At least I could explain what Strongleg Ridge is like at the moment as sections were pretty comparable – high saplings… though this had the added bonus of a very healthy dose of hardenbergia. John did most of the hard work up the front – leaving the rest of us wondering what the issue was.

Since the scrub had slowed us considerably we had lunch on the summit. That meant there was plenty of time for reading the logbook and learning about some of the local families who frequently visit the top. Then we spent quite a while trying, and failing miserably, to get a group photo – though it was at least highly entertaining.

We took a different route down which at some stages was considerably scrubbier than the equivalent section we’d come up, but in exchange we got more pagodas, some hand stencils and great views.

 

Day 2: Tramway Trail & Blacks Corner

After an exceedingly cold night (-4°C nearby) we woke to a sunny morning. The 8:30am start meant the ice covering the windscreen had time to melt before we had to go anywhere.

As always the second day of a weekend trip is a bit harder to get motivated for, but the Tramway Trail was formed for a lot further than we were expecting. Which meant Tom was still with us by the time we got to the cliff edge for morning tea.

After morning tea we tried to follow the cliff edge but got stymied by a drop off the pagodas – but worth the scramble for the views!

We had lovely views from our lunch spot across to our lunch spot of the previous day (Tayan Pic). Not often you get to do that! Though it seems none of my photos of the view made the cull.

A few of us were keen to find the jutty out rock we’d seen on our way up so we left the others to have post-lunch snooze while we diced with exposure on the edge of it.

A much quicker return as we knew the best way to go (most of the time) and didn’t need to stop and look at the historic artifacts on our way back.

A set of excellent day walks to make for a great weekend!