Megalong Ledges

I'm often amazed at how many excellent classic walks there are in the Blue Mountains which were completely unknown to me beforehand, and not in the usual repertoire of my bushwalking club.  My more adventurous Thursday group have knowledge of many more places, and yesterday some of us checked out another one of these.

It's known as the 'Megalong Ledges', and you go from Medlow Bath to Katoomba along a series of ledges half way down the cliffs above the Megalong Valley. The ledges are mostly quite wide and safe, and there are usually trees around you, so it's not so scary.

Near the start is a fine little rock formation, called the 'Three Brothers', because of their uncanny resemblance to the larger Three Sisters at Katoomba. Here's 'Brother Harold', making it four.




A bit to the north and at the top, the historic Hydro Majestic Hotel.









The ledges proper now. Always scenic, often very colourful, and usually with excellent views of the valley below.

Needless to say, it's a rock-climbers' paradise around here. There are climbing bolts everywhere. Maybe in the next life I'll be able to get interested in that pursuit. Not now though. It's fun enough anyway around here even with your feet on (fairly) solid ground.

Brother Paul here isn't a rock climber either, but he's climbed more mountains than almost anyone else in the world. See his extremely informative blog here: http://mntviews.blogspot.com.au/

A walk called Bruce

I'd been hearing about this lost-and-found-again bushwalk for a while,and jumped at the chance to find it for myself the other day, with my Friday bushwalking group.




Bruce was the surname of the Railways Dept surveyor who originally planned the track in 1931, as a maintenance track for a new power line that the Railways had got the job of putting in. It went from Blackheath to Bullaburra in the Blue Mountains, and it was promoted as a bushwalking track until World War 2, when it somehow got forgotten. It became overgrown and lost, and parts of it stolen for other purposes. Then in more recent times it got rediscovered and renovated by various legendary bushwalkers. Its continued existence does not seem to be celebrated by the National Parks people, the Blue Mountains City Council people, or the maps people, all of whom probably just see it as an extra expense if they were expected to maintain it or map it. Today it can be negotiated from Medlow Bath (starting from the Katoomba airstrip) to Wentworth Falls, and then from the other side of Wentworth Falls to Bullaburra.

We like it though. It's big enough to feel you've done a bit, and you get to see hanging swamps, cliffs and canyons, thicker forest, and do at least five significant downs and ups of 100-200m or more, to cross the various creeks flowing north towards the Grose River. Some of it's along fire trails under the power line, but a lot of it is on perfectly pleasant walking track away from the power line a bit.

There were new and old relics to see along the way - mostly new fire service signs or bits of old power poles. This kept our accompanying historian Keith happy. We saw no snakes unfortunately (I love snakes), but mountain dragons and other little lizards were in attendance. There were waratahs in flower, plus Keith identified two rare and special flowers found only in the Upper Blue Mountains.




Although most of the track is easy to follow, sometimes with track markers every few metres, some of it isn't quite like that. We lost it at one stage for half an hour or so, while we thrashed about in the bush until we suddenly got lucky and hit on it again.

As usual, a good day out in the bush. I plan to put it on the regular programme of my bushwalking club at some stage soon, now that it's well and truly found again.

Read more on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce's_Walk