Blue Mountains: Take 1

Last Tuesday we took a train to the Blue Mountains, a national park on a very old mountain range a couple hours outside of Sydney. The park is very large; it spans at least three stops on the train. We hiked a trail to the Wentworth Falls part of the national park, and then one of the many trails in the Wentworth Falls area. It was spectacular.

Adrienne found a really beautiful tree that had been cut and was laying over the riverbed.

The first trail we walked starts in a park near the train station and runs alongside a small river. Other than the river, the area felt pretty dry.  A lot of the vegetation was brown or leafless and there were places that had burned relatively recently. It was still quite beautiful, with some cool sandstone walls, pretty birds, and there are many waterfalls along the river’s path. I even got to see a snake slithering away after Adrienne walked passed its hiding spot.

The sandstone walls can form some pretty amazing sculptures.

You can see the trail here, the area felt very dry.

A waterfall about half way to the Wentworth Falls National Park area.

As we got into the Wentworth Falls area, the vegetation started to become more lush, the ground more damp, the humidity increased, and the waterfalls increased in size. And then we got to a lookout. Oh boy, was it stunning. I was frozen in place, staring out over an enormous valley, on top of a ~300 foot cliff. The valley is flanked by vibrantly colored sandstone walls, and headed by a giant waterfall, Wentworth Falls. We continued walking a path that took us along one of the walls of the valley, and every time I looked out over it, I was awestruck. The place is beautiful.

My first look over the valley. Wow.

Another view of the valley from a bit higher up.

This view was taken after we had walked to the right side of the other two pictures a bit, looking out to the left.

There is a path that walks across the top of Wentworth Falls. These waterfalls are are the top, facing away from the valley.

This is looking out over the valley, with the previous picture behind. The path had an amazing warning sign on it, see Adrienne’s post for that.

After continuing down the trail, we got a great view of Wentworth Falls.

This should give some perspective on how big the waterfall is.

One of the overhangs along the trail.

The path we continued on is called the Undercliff/Overcliff hike, part of the hike goes through a bunch of cave-like overhangs that have been created, presumably, by thousands of years of erosion from the water that runs down the walls from above and plant growth (complete conjecture on my part.) The hike also goes along the top of the cliff wall (Overcliff) and gives incredible views of the valley below. On the Overcliff part of the hike, we ran across a few birds. The first was two female superb lyrebirds, they have really big feet they used to dig up brush looking for food. If you’ve never heard of a lyrebird, go watch this video. As long as we stood still, they didn’t seem to mind us and went about their business. Look for Adrienne’s post about this trip to see pictures of them.

A crimson rosella sits near a hole in a tree.

The second was a pair of crimson rosellas. They were flitting around a hole in a tree that may have been their nest. Adrienne went into the bush to get some good pictures of them. What we saw of the Blue Mountains was amazing, and we’re going to go back to check out some other hikes later this week.