Grand Cliff Top Walk, part 2

We left off yesterday after I had arrived tired but happy to Leura. The morning of the seventh started at half past five in the morning when I started out towards Sublime Point to catch the sunrise. It was quite a lonesome two kilometre walk in the pre dawn purplish light, listening to a lot of bird song and thankfully without my backpack which I had left at the hotel.

I reached Sublime Point maybe 15 minutes before sunrise and was happy to find that I was alone there. As the sun slowly crept closer to the horizon the sky moved from dark to light blue with a golden shimmer resting over the mountains as the light refracted through the eucalyptus trees’ fragrant oils.

Once again I did my best to get some photos with me in them while being alone, and I am actually really happy with the results. The trick is to find a branch or a rock where you can lodge your phone, give it a 10 second timer and then scramble to get into a good position, in the case of the photo above by literally climbing onto this quite large rock. After maybe half an hour out on the lookout I returned back to the hotel for a well earned breakfast. And then packing up my stuff to set out on the second day of my Grand Cliff Top Walk.

As I set out I first had to traverse a few suburb neighbourhoods before reaching the cliffs, and as I reached the entrance to the wilds I was greeted by a concert of birdsong from a clump of trees. I descended onto the cliffs and my first stop was a lookout over the morning cliffs and then down in a valley to visit the Pool of Siloam. Then up again to the Gordon Falls picnic where I had to navigate further track closures meaning more up and down the cliff to not miss any of the spectacular lookouts over Jamison valley. The walk then continued on more wonderfully kept tracks through the dryer upper part of the the cliffs, occasionally opening up to another awe inspiring view or drastic cliff reaching out over the path.

When I reached Leura Falls, a water fall cascading down into a deep and quite wide canyon reaching into the plateau, I decided to stray of the ordinary route and instead descend down to the forest floor in Leura Forest. This meant that I had to brave another set of incredibly step stairs clinging to the inside walls of the cliffs, a descent of probably a hundred height meters. And for anyone which haven’t walked down step stairs and stepped trails with a heavy pack, it is surprisingly hard work. I mean you expect climbing upwards to be heavy work, but I found it way worse to go down. You really need to control your speed to not fall, and that takes muscles which at least I don’t normally use, plus it’s really hard on the knees.

Midway through this decent I spotted two girls coming back to the main path from a small trail following the waterfall stream, and I decided to investigate. Which after a 100 meters brought me to the infinity pool seen above where the stream filled a small pool with refreshingly cold water. This water then cascades over the cliff and into a waterfall which looked like it fell maybe 50 meters. But it was hard to tell without getting dangerously close to an unguarded sheer cliff with running water. As such I enjoyed the swim and kept a fair margin to the edge.

Feeling refreshed from this dip it was back to the climb down to the forest floor, all the while the environment around me got wetter. But when I arrived on the forest floor the climate got a bit drier as the land was dominated by enormous trees and the ground covered in their leaves. The walk down here continued on for maybe a kilometre as I made my way up the slow incline of the Dardanelles Pass (don’t know the relationship to the straits in Turkey I flew over on my way here).

Reaching the end of this forest track I found my self at the foot of the Giant Stairway, a 900 step stair carved into the side of the mountain climbing somewhere between 150 and 200 meters straight up. At the top of which you find the Three Sisters, probably the most famous rock formation in the Blue Mountains.

This final great challenge before getting back to civilisation turned out to not be too bad. With some chocolate, a few breaks and plenty of water I made my way up in good time and suddenly found my self in the middle of a flock of tourists, right by the bridge to the innermost of the Three Sisters (unfortunately closed). By this point I was really hungry so I made my way up to Echo point which was even more overrun by tourists. There must have been hundreds of people swarming around the heavily built up lookout, hundreds of meters of steel grated floors and rails for different views of this attraction. It’s of course great that such great sites are accessible for all, but it was quite jarring coming from a very solitary walk in what felt like wilderness (even though I was never more than a few kilometres from civilisation as thee bird flies) and suddenly finding your self in what felt like a zoo. But that also meant there where facilities, so I refilled my water bottle, went to the bathroom and then had a very well deserved and way too expensive hamburger and a bit of a break.

Then back to the track with some new energy, but my heart wasn’t really in it anymore as this last, hyper curated trail to Scenic world had a hard time competing with my earlier experiences. But I soldiered on, I wasn’t about to give up just a few kilometres before the end. When I finally did reach Scenic world it was with a mixture of great pride and horror at the hyper commercial complex I had reached, a far cry from the lone path just hours earlier. And I didn’t even find a single item in their more than a 100 square meters of gift shop commemorating the Grand Cliff Top Walk 😕

All in all Grand Cliff Top Walk was probably the best thing I did while in Sydney, such an amazing hike trough such varied climates with such spectacular views. But it was also probably one of the most physically demanding things I have ever done: more than 40 kilometres of walking with a somewhat heavy backpack in 30 degree temperatures and the unforgiving Australian sun. Oh, and probably at least a kilometres of height meters, which I went both up and down.