Wollangambe Crater

The walk in to Wollangambe Crater in the Blue Mountains is one of those classic bushwalks that I've been doing every few years since I moved to Sydney. 

The walk usually starts at Bell. You walk for a few hours in sometimes quite wild country, to an unusual saucer-shaped feature, the origin of which seems to be the subject of some debate by geologists and others who claim to be in the know.


Was it an asteroid impact, a volcano, or is it just a coincidental arrangement of ridges and valleys formed by the usual erosion forces? Or was it the 'electric machining' referred to on the website thunderbolts.info  The aerial photo above is from that site, and is credited to Garry Maxfield. I must admit it's never looked all that cratery to me from within it though.

I did the walk again last weekend, with a party of mostly Wollangambe newbies. The big bushfire a few years back, and the subsequent regrowth, has made the usual 'tricky navigation' sequences even trickier than usual, so we weren't let down in the occasional positional uncertainty department. But it's hard to get very lost these days, with all those GPS devices around.

We all posed for pictures on my favourite armchair tree. And we admired a good crop of late-flowering waratahs.



























Below: A lazy lunch in the crater

Jinki and Jungaburra

Not the names of my two pet koalas, but two great bushwalking ridges near Bell in the Blue Mountains.

My bushwalking adventure group were there recently, and were delighted at how accessible was this rather spectacular scenic walk, previously unknown to most of us.

There was a bit of rock scrambling and ascending of cliffs with the aid of metal steps. But rock-climbing wasn't actually required. The climbers we came across were another intrepid group.

I'm forever amazed at how many wild and spectacular places there are to explore within an hour or two's drive of Sydney. Let's hope they keep coming.

Bushwalkers bush-bash to Bell's Barnacles

Another new destination (for me) in the unique pagoda formation country a couple of hours north west of Sydney.

We went the other day to the Barnacles, a pair of parallel ridges in the Blue Mountains National Park. You start at the truck checking station at Bell, then bush-bash a few kilometres north and east along various ridge tops, using careful navigation.

It's a satisfying sort of walk. A well defined destination, some fine scenery, those navigational challenges, and at the moment at least, not too overgrown (because of the big 'State Mine' fire of three and a bit years ago). So it's not too exhausting a day out.

I'll go back on a sunny day sometime. It'll be quite spectacular then.

About to ascend onto the western ridge.

Emerging from the slot.

Looking across to the eastern ridge.

Gooches Crater

Gooches Crater is a classic old favourite Blue Mountains bushwalk. It's a pleasant two or three hours in along the ridge tops north of Bell.

You start at the spot on Sandham Road just beyond the now unwelcoming private property that we used to be able to walk across. You sidle across to the east a few hundred metres, then join the good old main ridge track northwards.

After crossing the Wollangambe River (probably on a big fallen tree trunk), you clamber up again, and do a couple more kilometres northwards along another ridge. The tracks have become much harder to find, in the aftermath of the massive bushfire here three years ago (described here: 2013 adventure ) and under my expedition leadership, we wandered around a bit more than I'd hoped, before eventually finding our way into the Crater through the maze of hills and pagodas and ridges. It's not really a crater. It just looks like one.






















After lunch among the flannel flowers, we explored some nearby rock features, and then pioneered another route back, via Friday Canyon (as named by us on a previous expedition, pictured here), and Dargan Arch.











Another nice day out for the Thursday Surveyors!