The one where I climb Burning Mountain...

Earlier in the year I wrote out, and published a list of fitness related goals that I would like to do in the coming 12 months, one of them was to climb a mountain, specifically Burning Mountain, located in the Upper Hunter Valley about 15 minutes north of Scone.

We drive past it quite regularly on the way to BM's family farm in Dorrigo, and have long wondered about it.  Well, no more wondering - on 21st June - I CLIMBED IT!!!

My first mountain!  I say first, because as it implies, I will be climbing others in the future.

I'm not really sure what I expected, and I'm not even sure if what I did, or even if the mountain itself lived up to the expectations that I didn't have... If that makes any sense...  It probably doesn't, but I'm still trying to figure it out myself.

I had done all of the pre-requisite research into it - information about it was pretty scarce, and what material I could  find was completely unhelpful.  I found out that the loop from the carpark and back is just over 4.8km, that the elevation is 120m   I'm assuming above sea level,  and that there are loo's available... that's about it.  There are only a couple of photo's, and most of those are of the scorched earth that's at the peak, and of a boardwalk.  But what I wanted to know was what sort of terrain it was, was it easy or hard, was there actual climbing involved, or was it just a track...

Going on the meager information I could find, I assumed that it would be a gentle incline, well I mean, how steep could it be if the summit was only 120m up and you had to walk nearly 2.5km to get there?  and that there would be boardwalks the whole way.

Not surprisingly, as we know, one should never assume, and I turned out to be a little bit wrong.

So in anticipation of this, I began to get a little disappointed, and I thought that I may need a bigger challenge.

My SIL lives at Buderim and had recently posted on FB that she had climbed Mt Coolum.  I saw the picture and thought  'OOO I could do that too!'.  Challenge accepted!

I had even started thinking that Burning Mountain is not really  a mountain at all, is more like a really big hill, so isn't going to be much of a challenge at all, and I really  wanted a challenge, badly.  I wanted something that would really push me through any barriers that I threw up, so I could just plough straight through them and know, really know,  that I can do anything!

I think it was because I had seen the pictures of Mt Coolum by then, and in comparison ... well... let me put it like this:

Burning Mountain     MT COOLUM

Back to Burning Mountain.

From rear: Dad, Mum,
BM, me, and DD

My parents made the trip down from Maryborough to climb it with me, Mum is 71 and Dad is 64, BM came too, as did DD.

Some of the 12WBT lovelies were meant to come as well but their babies got sick, they got sick, and hubby's were working...  Life happened... It was also a long way for them to come and took a lot of rescheduling on their part so they were disappointed to have to pull out, but the mountain isn't going anywhere soon, after all it has been burning for around 6,000 years, so we can do it again another time.

We got there about 9.30am and headed off, I was so excited, but really didn't know what to expect, and was anxious that everyone else would enjoy the day.

Dad and BM took off  ahead of Mum, DD, and I brought up the rear.  I told them to go at their own pace and not worry about me, I would just plod along and catch up at some point.

So DD caught up to her Grandad and BM, while Mum said 'I am  going at my own pace!'.

There was a lot of this...

The first couple of hundred metres was probably the hardest - maybe because it was a freezing day, the wind was blowing, and I had yet to warm up, but Dad says it was because that section was the steepest.

Mum just wanted to know where the 'gentle incline' was that she had been promised.

There was one bit where I actually managed to overtake my Mum, got all excited, and did a little dance... I was so proud that I had overtaken my 71 year old Mum.  WOO HOO!!  Then she went sailing past me again.  Oh well. 

...at the beginning.

There were plenty of seats placed along the way, and the steeper the climb, the closer together they were.  There were even a couple of picnic tables!  Dad, BM & DD would go on ahead until they got to a seat, then they would stop, sit and wait for Mum, and when I arrived they would all get up and go off again, only to repeat the sequence when they got to the next seat.  So basically, they all got regular breaks, and I did the entire thing with NO breaks at all!  Is it any wonder that they all looked fresh as a daisy and I was as red as a lobster?

The view from one of these...

The seats were generally placed where there was a lovely view, so they had something nice to look at while they waited for me to turn up.

At one point DD must've decided that it might be a good idea to keep tabs on her Nana and I  in case we fell off the mountain I suppose,  so she decided that we should play a game usually reserved for swimming pools, called Marco Polo.

As Mum and I were out of sight most of the time, the blindfold requirement was satisfied, and DD would periodically call out 'Marco' to which we were supposed to respond with 'Polo', thus letting her know that we hadn't in fact fallen off the mountain, and were still very much alive, and bringing up the rear.

...looked a lot like this.

Not a bad idea, except that Mum refused to play.  She jacked up at playing a game using the name of the bloke that discovered America... not Australia...  So when DD called out 'Marco'. I hollered back 'Burke' or 'Wills' or 'Wentworth' and at the last, 'James Cook'.

When the wide open spaces gave way to not-quite-as-wide-and-much-less-open-but-not-really-bush-yet spaces, that's when the stairs made an appearance.  There were stairs just about the entire way, with the exception of the odd 10 metre stretches, and the initial few hundred metres.

Stairs.  Stairs everywhere.

It was at this point I decided that perhaps Mt Coolum should be moved to the 10 year plan...

There was a little track worn along side the stairs, which I know Mum used, but I'm not sure about the others - the stairs were too much for her knees, but I took the stairs.  Every single one of them.  According to my Fitbit One it was 87 flights of stairs there and back.  Mum tried to get me to walk along the track, because she said it was easier than the stairs, which of course it would have been.  But I wasn't there to take the easy way out, I was there to challenge myself.  To do any less than that would have been short changing myself.  I told her that, but I don't think she understood.

The old me would have taken the track.  Hell, the old me wouldn't have even done it!  That woman would have waited in the car park with a cappuccino and all the electronic gadgets she could get her hands on!

The closer we got to the top, the more the vegetation changed.  There was no ground cover, and the trees began to look a little sick, and they thinned out dramatically, until at the top there was just scorched earth.

There's a boardwalk built along side the scorched earth which is the summit, so you don't really get the full impact of the burning coal seam on the environment, or of the scale of the devastation the fire has wrought.  Years ago you could actually walk across it and see the fissures, and the smoke and steam escaping, and feel the heat through your shoes. But now the ground is unstable, and as with most things, to protect the environment, there had to be changes.

Summit of Burning Mountain

The boardwalk used to be built across the top of it, so you could still walk basically right into the middle of it, but that's gone, and now the boardwalk is at the side, and if it weren't for the smell of burning sulphur, and the heat you can see rising from the mounds of ash, you would think it was just a pile of red dirt and ash that had been dumped there.

Because everyone else was faster than me, they of course, got to the top before me.  I rounded the last corner to see DD filming my approach, and heard faint strains of  'Eye of the Tiger' from 'Rocky'.

The timing was perfect!

So being the introvert that I am, I had a bit of fun with it.

The return journey was decidedly uneventful, except that I kept spotting all these pops of bright green.  In such a drab landscape it really stood out.  It was moss growing on the side of the steps, that I hadn't seen on the way up because we were rather absurdly  going down at the time... but it was the brightest green I had ever seen!

The 5km loop there and back took just under 2 hours, with stairs most of the way.  If you weren't waiting for anyone slow, you could probably do it in half the time.

Durham Hotel aka Wingen Pub.

Back at the bottom and we hauled ourselves into the car and off to the Wingen pub for lunch.  You know the one that sits just off the New England Highway and is lower than the road level?   They do an excellent meal!  Great prices too except for the Reef'n'Beef, that was overpriced,  and you got a decent serve.

So, now that its done, did Burning Mountain meet my expectations?

Yes and no.

I'm really glad that it wasn't all a giant boardwalk, and equally glad that it wasn't just a cake walk.  It wasn't as easy as I had feared, but it also wasn't as challenging as I had hoped.

I suppose that it was a great place to start.  Not so hard that it scared me off, but easy enough to know that I can do more, can give more, and more importantly, that I want  more.

 

Maybe Mt Coolum isn't in the 10 year plan after all...

The First Nation tale: