Had a great walk but was soo soo tired yesterday. The walk definately contributed but the activities either side didn't help either.
Started the walk from Scenic world at 5pm Saturday afternoon. Climbed Ruined Castle for a few quick snaps and then continued to Mt Solitary. Made it to Chinaman's Gully around sunset and watched that from a rock platform a few hundred meters past the camp to the south. Ended up wandering into Singa-Jingawell creek campsite about 8:20pm under headlight. After the 4:30am start that morning from Newcastle, Canoyoning all day then the climb out to say I was a bit tired would be an understatement.
Had a great camp in the hammock for the night and set the alarm for 5;30am hoping to get an early start and see a bit of sunrise. Well the early start happend but no sunrise due to the early cloud. The walk/slide down of the Eastern end of the Mt's was interesting..... then all those up's and down's on the walk to the bottom of the Giant Staircase. man that thing really is Giant eh..... I think I should have read the notes better and not planned to do the whole 3 day loop by lunchtime on Sunday, Must have missed the 2800m climb total bit on the notes. Those stairs near killed me and I was quickly becoming impatient on the walk to Echo point with tourists that kept stepping into my path
I think it was about 1pm when I sat down at the Katoomba Falls Kiosk for the best milkshake ever. If you take off the time in the night camp but leave included the small breaks I had regaining oxygen I was walking for about 10.5hours. I was happy to complete the 3 day loop so quickly but was pretty tired at the end of it. This was a very enjoyable walk but maybe a little too much fire trail at the end along sublime point trail (That's just me though having a major preference for foot track). Even so it was excellent. The steep sections over Mt Solitary are not probably for the beginner walker but even so it was heaps of fun. Some of the steep sections on either side of Solitary were really steep (Sounds obvious eh) and a bit of rock scrabbling was required. Loved it. I'd imagine the eastern scrabble down the steeper parts of the track off Solitary would be quite challenging if it was raining and very slippery. It was bad enough on the hard packed trail with loose gumleaves. Several times I had a few good near misses when there were no visable rocks to step on and the track/leaves slide away under your feet.
I couldn't spot any water up on Mt Solitary even though it had been raining Saturday morning. There were frogs croaking in a few gullies though so there must have been some moisture. I'd carried in enough water so didn't look to hard for more.
My new pack was great - Z Packs Arc Blast.
At first I was sceptical of the durability of the pack with the bumps and scraps of the track. I shouldn't have worried. The packs just as clean looking as when I left. Same cannot be said for my sunglasses which have a nice deep 1.5" scar right across left eye lens. The glasses were hanging from the from left shoulder pouch. If the scrub could do that and not even phase the pack that's good enough for me. There was plenty of wizzing noises as the pack (and me) pushed through the spiky dry scrub slightly overgrowing the trail. In no way was it an offtrack walk but there were plenty of scrabbles getting up/down Solitary when the pack contacted pretty well with the sandstone. I didn't go to any effort to baby the pack that's for sure. It was a good first test anyway.
The frame works great transfering weight to the hips and the ventalation is very similar to my Exos 46.
I had a baseweight of 4.1kgs (9 lbs) and carried 600g of food + 3 litres of water for the dry camp on the Mt. All in all I'm completely sold that zpacks is onto a winner with this design.
FYI, The Cold Play concert on Sunday night was awesome !! The drive back to Newcastle, 1am climb into bed then back to Sydney at 5:30am Monday didn't agree with me.... not one little bit. Maybe I jammed a bit much into one weekend but oh well. I'll remember it well !! I did sleep very well last night though.......
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