From white-out to fab views in the Blue Mountains
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2005
1
62
137
Trip End
Sep 20, 2006
Sydney,
Australia
Saturday, February 4, 2006
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We got to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains on the direct train from Central Station in Sydney which took about 2 hours. As the train left the Sydney suburbs and began to climb we were seeing less and less, we were going up into the fog and cloud that had been hanging over the city all that day and the day before. Arriving in Katoomba we hadn't seen any of the views of the mountains from the train, and actually couldn't even see the end of the street because the fog was so thick
01 - Apparently there's a view there!
! We had booked dorm beds in the Blue Mountains YHA which was a very nice hostel indeed.We had had our lunch on the train so we just dumped our stuff and went off for a walk. We decided to take Prince Henry's Clifftop Track along to Echo Point (where you're supposed to get The View of the Three Sisters rocks. The mist and fog gave the whole place a very different atmosphere, it was very quiet and you could really hear the birdsongs and dripping water from all the trees - it was quite like a rainforest, but a foggy, lightly raining and slightly cool rainforest! It turned out to be a great walk despite only being able to see things that were not further than 10m away! We took some silly photos at the lookout points, looking out into the white space that hid the fantastic views the information panels described for us!
The next day we woke up quite early and headed back down to Echo Point because it was much clearer, although still pretty overcast. We could actually see the Three Sisters although thicker cloud would quickly blow across and hide them every now and again. We could also see further out from the lookout to the mountains beyond, still misty but 100% better than the day before when we could see squat!
02 - Morning brought an improvement....
We decided to go down the Giant Staircase right down to the bottom of the cliff face - it was very steep and we were glad we weren't going to have to climb the staircase at the end of the walk! All the time the sun was breaking through the cloud and mist and over the course of the walk it pretty much cleared up completely. We followed the Federal Track around the base of the Three Sisters and then climbed back up to the top to follow the clifftop trail back to Echo Point. Along the way we saw the fantastic views of the Blue Mountains that we'd hope to be able to see - we consider ourselves very lucky that the fog cleared when it did, some of the people at the YHA had been in Katoomba for a few days waiting for the weather to improve!
