Over the last few weeks that have been frenetically stuffed with work and such things, we’ve jumped at the chances to get out of town. They’ve been great trips and I’ll show you something of them in this post, but Sarah and I have realised that we’ve been pretty much repeating ourselves. The difference between then and now is time, but also lots of experience. We’re also introducing a wide-eyed small person to it all :-)
Most of the way to Albany, the Stirling Ridge Walk is the most Tassie-like that we’ve found in Western Australia. This photo was taken at Easter – five years ago. Before our Americas Trip and much more.The weather’s a bit different this time, but lots of climbing and walking happens.
When up overcomes leg power, there are back up plans
This trip is a series of day walks from base, rather than a multi-day ridge walk. Things brighten for us.Sarah surveying her world – we’d had a plan to head along from the summit of Talyuberlup to Mt Magog then back to the road, but the bush-bash required isn’t compatible with a toddler in a back-pack.Especially a sleeping toddler. We managed to get nearly all the way down before he woke up again :-)Hawk’s Head at dawn – in the Kalbarri Gorge. Great ideas seem to crop up again – we headed up here for the June long weekend in 2010 and again in 2015.
Kalbarri’s about 600km north of Perth, and that bit further than the south coast, so when a five day weekend came our way it seemed a good plan to head north to warmer climes (and climbs).
We spent nearly all our time at the Z-bend cliffs this time – it’s an adventure playground for all ages…Getting distracted on the way from A to B is a significant issueLooking down from the look-out, the climbing’s mostly on the left with some in plain view of the tourists and the better stuff hidden away down-streamIn order to keep climbing without obligatory extra-family help, we’ve got into self-belaying. This works fine for climbs that are reasonably straight up and and down like “Keith goes blank”, but doesn’t work for routes longer than a rope-length. It’ll give us enough to keep us busy for the time being :-)It’s all about pouring things at the moment – repeatedlyThat and washing up (this probably won’t last into his teenage years).
Above all – in between toddler herding and climbing, it’s a great place to just sit and ‘be’ for a while.
Is return a bad thing? Certainly not, but it does provoke a fair bit of pondering…
Is return a bad thing? Certainly not, but it does provoke a fair bit of pondering…
bicyclenomad 