The Brigadoon of the Blue Mountains

Have you ever been on a hike and you weren’t entirely convinced that you arrived exactly where you were supposed to?  That kinda happened on a recent bush walk to Mt. Hay in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney, Australia.

I’m not entirely convinced we even reached the Mt. Hay summit at all. Instead, I’ve come to the conclusion that the pile of stones at the so called ‘summit”  was some sort of portal to the Scottish village of Brigadoon.

Let me explain… The first sign that Mt. Hay didn’t want to be found was when it wasn’t really clear on where we had to go.   We, then, threw any shred of logic out the window and actually looked at the map – like i mean really looked at the map.   Thats when we figured that we had a bit of a drive ahead of us before even REACHING the start of the hike.

A forty minute drive later, a lot of swerving and potholes (seriously thank God the SUV had suspension) we reached what looked like to be a car park with a view that was simply magical!For those of you who have anything less than an SUV, trust me, your car will seriously just explode whilst driving.  It’s absolutely not worth taking any sort of little dinky car on these fire trails… because I bet the doors will probably be the first to go… Then, you’ll probably watch a wheel roll off into the bush followed by the entire car going over the cliff.  Safety first people! The cool part about the drive is, there are some badass rock formations that you get to drive past.  Just note that there will be a cliff on the other side of you, too.  I’m not kidding!  Also, you won’t be able to get another car to squeeze past, so be patient.  There also may be  hikers walking up the path.  And there is the occasional information sign for you to glance at that may or may not help you.  You will be able to consult Google as you will still be sporting about 4 bars at the carpark.  We were in nature mode so kinda forgot about the Internet which may have been quite useful at this point (I just don’t understand how people survived before the Internet). There was one sign that mentioned rail road tracks – we didn’t have a clue what that meant – until….. 

Ta-da!  We knew we were on the right trail – kinda.   The trail was pretty easy.  At some parts, it was like walking down an unkept sheep trail – and kinda like hiking off-road.  I understand now how people disappear in the Blue Mountains all the time.   It seemed that people had not walked this trail for possibly days…   but, it was full of incredibly hungry spiders.  Not only did these clever little creatures decide to set up shop on the biggest bug freeway on the mountain, but they’re also hidden in their little leaf just to spite me – clever little creatures!  Every three meters, you’ll walk into another one.  I cracked the shits and decided that a “home wrecker branch” was necessary.  Tara-98 Spiders-6! #Winning! The land actually started to changed a bit.   It went from being quite bushy to being more humid and overgrown almost like a cloud hit the mountain and it rained a bit. There was the occasional rock wave, too.Then, after about 40 minutes of climbing, we reached what we thought was the summit.  It almost felt like being in a overgrown farmers field with some sort of sacrificial lazy Stonehenge.  I pondered for a while whether it was too rocky and high up for Kangaroo’s to actually hop around this place.  We agreed that Wallaby’s would actually be the best option for hoppy Australian creatures to scale something like Mt Hay.  And also discussed the physics of how hopping faster actually uses less energy – (will test theory the next time I’m doing box jumps)On the way back down it was a truly revolutionary moment.  “It’s not always about the destination but rather the journey.”  Sure we all have heard this stupid saying a bazillion times, but in this case, it was actually a bit true.  On the way up and down, there was a whole lot of awesome to see. The views were absolutely to die for.  Such sweeping incredibly gorgeous views.  And the sound… you could hardly hear a thing.  I would give Mt Hay 4 out of 5 hiking boots for the soul reason that I don’t think we  actually reached correct summit.  After consulting Doctor Google, it seems that Mt Hay had a very different looking summit than the one we went to. I feel as if Mt Hay won this round.  It’ll be able to keep it’s secrets a bit longer. Ill get you next time, Gadget.  Next time…