Mount Warning has been on my radar for sometime. I was visiting Springbrook National Park’s Best of All Lookout some months back, when I stood on the edge of the lookout and pointed out to this amazing mound out in the distance, and said, “I want to climb that one.”
Fortunately there was a sign that actually told me what the mount was named, so I could go home and map out my trip.
It took some months to get around to it… weather, timing, work… all the things that usually get in the way of my social life. But eventually we just said, “Hang it, let’s just go.”
So we took off on a Friday morning with the plan to spend a bit of time in the Tweed Valley region and warm ourselves up to our walk.
As with all good plans, you can never quite be prepared for what the weather is going do. As we arrived in Uki, which is a small town not far from the base of Mount Warning, the weather was reasonable. Reasonable enough to afford us a wonderful evening watching the sunset slowly setting behind the stunning mountain from the courtyard of Castle on the Hill, our accommodation for the weekend, with a refreshing glass of wine and some crackers and dip… magnificent.
The morning however, was a completely different story… we couldn’t even see the mountain. All we could see was cloud, thick, heavy-with-rain looking cloud…
Our breakfast table, with what would have been spectacular views of the mountain, was instead nothing… a window pane with a bit of condensation, but other than that, yep, nothing.
We had come all this way and were not going to go home without at least one valiant attempt.
So we got ourselves organised – a little lacklustrely, I will admit. We decided to leave the cameras at home, as it was unlikely we were going to be able to get them out – that was with the exception of our little waterproof wonder that we failed to check the battery of, so that was a bit of a useless exercise…
Fortunately we were prepared for rain… we had some plastic ponchos (remnants from the AC/DC concert of the night before, just in case it rained, which it didn’t – the concert was AWESOME by the way). We were going to need them.
We arrived at the carpark at the base of Mount Warning to the greeting of torrential (and I mean TORRENTIAL) rain and a few ear-numbing thunderbolts and we temporarily questioned the sanity of what we were doing. We sat in the car for a few moments straightening up our ponchos and twiddling our thumbs, waiting for – I am not sure what – the rain to stop I guess. It didn’t.
In the end we thought, “What the heck”, and decided just to have a bit of fun, get soaking wet and see how far we get.
It’s funny really when you think about it, as kids you don’t give the rain a second thought. I remember my mum could barely keep me inside in the rain, yet as adults, it may as well be acid rain, for the enthusiasm we show to get out there and get wet.
I laughed in my first few moments of stepping out of the car – it pretty much could not have rained more if it tried, but it was refreshing – it was quite a warm day, so hyperthermia was unlikely if we did happen to get wet. That was nice at least. It was about one hundred meters or so up the track where I looked to my cherrybabe and questioned whether or not we should go any further – it was roughly about the same time we heard another thunder clap – they are a little unnerving. We decided we would wander up a little further, just for something to do, and at this point we were under a dense canopy of trees, so we didn’t feel like we were in any immediate danger of being fried by lightning but we both agreed if the lightning continued we would revise the situation and then revert to a speedy descent.
However, at this point, under the canopy it was not too bad.
Then, as fortune would have it, the rain lightened up to a faint drizzle, the lightning and thunder stopped altogether and we could actually see a few gaps in the clouds. So we persevered.
Oh… did I mention the leeches? Yes, the leeches. Apparently the rain brings them out and it was starting to look like worked at an abattoir by the blood streaks on our legs and clothing from somewhat ‘panicked’ removal. Let me just say, that I am not a fan of leeches… I noticed that walkers coming down the summit had these similar splashes of blood on their legs (they weren’t fans either), so this was not exclusive to us, and these same walkers informed us that the lightning and thunder had scared the living daylights out of them… apparently the thunder and lightning were somewhat ‘amplified’ at the summit…
While we had not at all planned to walk the entire way to the top (well, at least I had not) after not a great deal of effort we were about three quarters of the way and wonderfully, the rain had now stopped.
This brought a whole new gamut of pleasantries as now it was incredibly humid. My poncho had its own eco-system of condensation happening underneath it, so while I had managed to avoid getting wet from the rain, I was instead quite damp from the humidity and condensation, which made it quite cool once I removed my poncho. The blood on my legs was a bit sticky too. Awesome 😉
However, once I got over my own personal comfort (or lack there of) and looked around, something quite wonderful was happening. Clouds were lifting, or perhaps they were dropping, and we were now on top of the clouds. Big fluffy clouds. Hovering between peaks and capping the smaller ones. It looked spectacular!
This was the first point where we could also appreciate our surroundings. The trail is an easy one; it is only a gentle ascent, weaving back and forth up the mountain. There are markers when you reach the quarter, halfway and three quarter point to let you know how far you have reached – or how far you haven’t – depending on whether you are a cup half full or half empty sort of person.
After nearly 2 hours of walking… mostly in the rain… we finally reached the base just before the summit. The last 400 metres of the climb is a really steep scramble up the rocks. There are chains that you can use to help lever yourself onto the next ledge. For me this was the fun part. I think I need to give abseiling a try, as I love swinging on the chains, especially on the way down. Not that you swing on chains when you abseil in case anyone is perhaps thinking that I have a misguided impression of what abseiling actually is…
And then there we were, on the summit. Yaaayy!
It was pretty awesome. 1,156 metres above sea level. It was an extraordinary height and a good point to wonder about the beauty of it all.
Mount Warning is an enormous volcanic plug, the remnants of the 23 million year old shield volcano – the Tweed Volcano.
Erosion has whittled the mountain away to half the size of what the volcano would have been 23 million years ago – which is a mind boggling thought considering how high were up already, though I don’t think I would have fancied walking to the top 23 million years ago – we would definitely have needed an earlier start.
For trivia’s sake the erosion has created what is called an ‘erosion caldera’, the formation of which is fascinating in itself – I have become quite the volcanic plug geek. For anyone else with geek tendencies, there is a great book on it by Warwick Willmott (http://www.qld.gsa.org.au/rocks.htm)
It took me a while to get my head around the vastness of it. When you scope the valleys below and imagine that you are on top of the remaining plug of a now extinct volcano and the landscape before you has taken millions of years to carve itself out, it is all pretty awe-inspiring. Add to that the cloud formation that was scattered out across the entire valley made it particularly beautiful.
And… as a special bonus, because of the storms, we were pretty much the last people on the ascent, and everyone else before us, terrified by the lightning had made a pretty speedy descent. Sooo… we were all alone on top of the mountain, surrounded by absolutely peace and quiet. How wonderful.
From what I have heard, Mount Warning has hundreds of people make the walk daily, and at any given time of the day, there is pretty much always a crowd – especially at sunrise, when apparently it can be difficult to find standing space let alone sitting space. Mount Warning is rumoured to receive the first sunlight of Australia, so hundreds make the sunrise pilgrimage annually to witness it. Yet here were all by ourselves. Was it possible that we maybe broke a record for being the only people alone on top of Mount Warning? I wonder.
I would love to show you lots of wonderful photographs of the summit and the beautiful cloud formation, but it was at this point that we discovered that we had neglected to charge our little waterproof wonder-camera… awesome… so we resorted to iPhone snaps, which while ok, are a little deflating.
We wandered from vantage point to vantage point absorbing it all. Ate a muesli bar and a banana (gone are the days when I bother packing more than that – I like my pack light… so much so that my cherrybabe carries it for me… I think it is to stop me winging…)
Speaking of packs… as we began to make our descent, we made way for some exhausted young lads… they had the brilliant idea of carrying a six-pack of beer… I am sure they thought it was a good idea at the time…
Going down was fabulous. Loved the way down with the chains, I was jumping and swinging from one rock ledge to another, felt a bit like a little monkey.
When we reached the normal trail, without the rain, we could now appreciate the beauty of the walk. Ancient trees and vines line the way and I deemed it necessary to stop at almost every one of them to exclaim my awe and wonder. My cherrybabe is one patient man, I must say. He would look at the same wondrous moss and lichen covered ancient tree trunks – I think with awe, though it could have been blankly – and nod at my enthusiasm.
I think we could perhaps have made the descent in one and a half hours, but it was possibly due to these awe-inspired pauses, that it took us substantially longer.
However, I enjoyed the walk immensely. Though it did feel infinitely longer on the way down, I am not sure why. I am thinking that it was perhaps that on the way up, due to the rain and general unpleasantness of the weather conditions (and the leeches) that I was in some sort of meditative state… hiking coma perhaps… one can only speculate…
Either way, seemed one heck of a lot longer and I developed a bit of “Are we there yet?” subliminal questioning as we reached the next bend looking for the markers that confirmed we were now closer to the base.
Luckily the masses of various fungi on uprooted trees and rocks kept me entertained endlessly as I made every attempt to completely fill the memory on my iPhone with fungus photos. There was the odd moss and lichen shot, and I ran off a few dozen trying to capture the brush turkey that was incapable of posing, or getting out of our way (none of which turned out). Like I said, my cherrybabe is a very patient man…
Then finally, the car, and back to where we were staying for a nice warm shower. Ahhh.
Mount Warning is a great walk. All in all it, is approximately 8.8kms return – leave at least 5 hours for the return trip. While it is the highest of the peaks that I have climbed (at this point in time), it is certainly not the most difficult. In fact, it was quite a cruisey walk, not really a climb at al – with the exception of the last 400 metres. Having said that, it didn’t stop all of my muscles from seizing up the next day to a point that my ‘gait’ was now similar to that of a duck’s and simple things like getting out of bed or the car were now a majorly painful feat. *Reminder to self* need to get fit again!
While the walk in the rain was quite enjoyable, we have pencilled in a plan to return and, if we can engineer it, to do the climb again when it is not raining, or perhaps even a sunrise walk with the hundred or so others… watch this space…
This story was written by Petra Frieser – Pebbles + Pomegranate Seeds
