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Blue Mountains, Australia
33° 30' S 150° 15' E
Nov 29, 2005 03:23
Distance 0km

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Blackheath

Text written in: English

Second day, we caught the train to Blackheath. After a long walk along a road from the station, we arrived at the information centre. Gained a few ideas for walks there.

We walked along the under cliff walk to Evan's lookout. That was quite nice. Then came the mammoth up river hike.

It was called the Grand Canyon trail. The steps down soon started to become wet. Water seeped out of the mountains onto our heads. Was very exciting though. Spoke to a couple of Englishmen, who told us that we had a fair way to go. The walk was supposed to take 4 hours, and we were not organised enough to have brought lunch.

The trek was such that you could choose how to tackle certain parts of the river. We were hopping from one side to the other quite often. Climbing over rocks and trees to get through.

We came to an opening with a mini waterfall slightly to the left of the track. I instantly saw a photo opportunity. After giving my camera to Jason, I negotiated the obstacles standing in my way of the ultimate background.  Half way across I wandered why I hadn't given my rucksack, mp3 player and mobile to Jason too.

The water was quite murky next to the waterfall, which was around 2 metres from where I was. I stepped over to the rock on the other side of the river. I posed, and tried to bring my right foot over. Suddenly, I realised that I'd put too much faith in the grip of my non-walking trainers.

I slid off the rock, with quite a shocked look on my face, into the river. It was deeper than it looked. So, there I was stood, 4 1/2 feet deep in water with no obvious quick route out. Tried to pull myself up on one rock, but slipped back in again.

I finally managed to climb out, but sadly Jason was not able to get a picture of me in the water.

Phone and mp3 player in my pockets were ruined. The bag turned out to be quite waterproof, which was handy as I had my passport and wallet in there.

It started to rain more after that which made Jason wetter and me consistently wet.

When we finally arrived at the top of the walk, there was nothing there. We voted on following the road right. Turns out we should have gone left. But a nice German couple kindly took us all the way back to our hostel in Katoomba.