Rachel Grindlay

Despite visiting Kangaroo Valley several times over the years I’d never been up Mt Carrialoo. Time to rectify things this year. I decided to combine it with a visit to the Promised Land Lookout for a fuller day. There’s definitely no mucking around the ascent starts immediately and is relentless as you ascend 400m with only a few flat-ish sections to catch your breath.

I was chatting a lot which is never good for my navigation and we over shot the turn off for the lookout (not that it was marked) by a couple of hundred metres – no particular harm done. The track marked on the map was largely imaginary but it was pretty easy going through the bush and we just followed the high voltage cable signs out to the lookout. The cloud which had covered the valley was still lifting as we enjoyed the lovely views over morning tea.

After morning tea we headed back down the fire trail. McPhails fire trail is quite lovely – if I had to walk on fire trails (which I generally avoid) then give me one like McPhails any day of the week. Having missed the turn off earlier I was then hyper sensitive for our turn off onto Mt Carrialoo with a couple of false stops before plunging off into the bush.

This was another climb with nowhere to hide – just straight up the ridge.

Tom had picked out some attractive looking cliffs on the aerials as a good lunch spot. But going on the top wasn’t particularly quick and so I decided rather than have a very late lunch we’d make do with the cliff views we had.

Post lunch things we seemed to move quicker – maybe because we’d had some food. A few hundred metres out from the trig we picked up a solid foot pad that had been visible on the aerials. The same pad took us out to the ‘lunch’ cliffs for some pretty good views. We had a bit of time here taking photos and exploring the pass off.

Once we’d had our fill of views we headed back across Mt Carrialoo picking a different route off, which had some interesting scrambling, before rejoining the fire trail back to the cars.

This was my first full day walk in weeks, with an excellent group, one of the most enjoyable days I’d had out for a long time.