Sweet As, Out In The Wop Wops

On from Karijini

"Ithica is Gorges" so the T-shirt reads, and it's true here as well, althogh theres no shirt to remind you. So if you want a quick buck, get an ABN number and get in. You'd be minted.

The gorges are great. Dales is for swimming and relaxing and apparently Weano is " a bit more exciting" as the group of Irish lads sharing their Vino with me explained. I didn't get into Weano, I couldn't bother to get wet and as I discovered at the bottom of the canyon you get wet straight away. The next couple of hours are spent navigating a narrow canyon way waist to chest deep with water until which time you can only proceed with rope and wetsuit. Normally i'd be pretty keen on that sort of thing, but having climbed Mt Bruce the day before and having spent a couple hours in the sun taking photos already I wasn't all that intrested wading into a cold creek bed already in the late afternoon shaddow. Please forgive how un cool this is.

At least I sumitted Mt. Bruce second highest peak in WA. Formerly the highest. I guess they 'found' a mountain. They have a funny habit of doing that sort of thing here. For Instance; they only found the Bungle Bungles about thirty years ago. Of course your average local would know they've been using places like that to navigate for ten's of thousands of years. Same with Mt. Nameless here in Tom Price. I guess white people aren't orginal enough. 40 thousand years the thing's been called ____ but whitey didn't bother to ask.

Like I was saying, I climbed Mt. Bruce the other day and laughed all the way -between gasps - thanks to the old Monty Python sketch with the Australian Bruces. It's aces if you should come across it some day.
It's a 1235m peak, and about six Ks to the top. I was on the trail at ten and summited in abuut two hours. I took a fair few photos out and back and it took 5 hrs twenty all up. A great little climb wth sight of one of the big mines and a whole heap of red dust in the air. You can see it in the haze in every directionn and this particular day the visability was pretty bad because of it, despite the wind of which there was plenty. I figured I would see snakes but no such luck. I was the only one on the trail so I figured I would be sure to come across one. But then again I can't bring myself not to stomp when I walk , despite all other anecdotal evidence of a lack of interest in self preservation. Anyway still no snakes, no wildlife of any note along the trail in fact.
The trail made up for it though with a couple of intresting spots which demanded full attention coupled with four points of contact. Both were about a third of the way up from the bottom as you reach the end of the first saddle, or tier in the ridgeline. Here you turn a corner which has a nasty v shaped notch out of it, which opens to the slope about twelve feet below. Thew were nice enough to put in a hand rail made of chain link though. What they didn't do was make any adequate warning of that or the fifteen foot stepped wall that you negotiate moments later. Intrestingly it's the only place in the shade and out of the wind and consequently the first good stopping point to have a snack and a rest. This allows you to work out the moves in advance. Or in some cases think of all the nasty ways your body could tumble to the jagged blocks bellow. It's a funny place I tell ya.

posted by Dusty Calfee @ 10:35 PM