Photos from 2002 October 14
Today was a really long day. A really, really long day. I went on a loooong hike. It was glorious, but I sure feel sore, no doubt. Here's a map of what I did today. I put yesterday's hike on there in dark red, marked >Yesterday<, for comparison. Today, I started out at the hostel (marked >Start<), at about 9:30 am, and walked down to the Katoomba Cascades, after getting lots of water and some lunch food. Actually, I had to walk back to the hostel from the store because I forgot my wallet. Anyway, the green line stops where it meets the red line, but that's just because it jumps over to the inset map. I started todays hike where I finished yesterdays. I went down the Ferbur Stairs to the Federal Trail, and then followed that alllllll the way around to the Ruined Castle. Then I backtracked to the Golden Stair and hiked that up to the road, which I followed back to the top of the scenic railway, where I finally saw a bus that took me back to the center of town (purple line), where I arrived about 5:30 pm. Did I mention my feet hurt?	These are the Katoomba Cascades, the top of which are only a few meters from the road, so this is for all practical purposes the start of my hike.	This waterfall is called >Witches Leap<. According to the sign, >Leap< is Scottish dialect for a waterfall (maybe depressed Scots have a prediliction towards hurling themselves preferentially from wet embankments), and the first European explorers thought the rock formation reminded them of a witch. I can definitely see a face in these rocks, but how they thought of a *witch*, particularly, I have no idea.	This is a vertical panorama shot. The bottom of it is looking out and slightly down, but the top is looking straight up at the zenith. So you have to imagine it curling over above you.
One last glimpse of the >witch<.	The water that ran over the Katoomba Cascades next goes over Katoomba Falls. This is a ledge a chunk of the way down the falls (if you look on the inset map, this is where I drew the green line veering off the the right and then doubling back). It's a panorama view, but the dynamic range of the light was just too great for me to get a similar light level across the whole image.	Here's a view up from the left side of the previous photo.	Now, once you continued on the trail for a ways, you came around on the other side of the canyon and you could look back and see the whole falls. Here's a part of them: you can see the ledge where I took the previous photos at the bottom of this picture.
Now, to try to give you a sense of the extent of the falls, that same ledge is in the *middle* of this picture. It's a long way down. I actually thought I would get down to the actual floor of the valley today, but even at its lowest point, the federal pass was still a good way up the cliffside. But I'm getting ahead of myself.	Now, this is one of the main tourist attractions around here. >The Three Sisters<. There's a story that goes with them about a father with three daughters, who turns them into stone to protect them while he goes off and does something (I forget what). Then he loses the talisman he needs to change them back out in the Jamison Valley. So he turns into a bird to go look for it, and to this day, the three sisters wait, and you can hear the desparate fathers cries through the rainforest.	The path today was more precarious than the one yesterday, especially once I got past the bottom of the scenic railway. More on that later. Here is a part of the Furber Stairs.	Another part of the path.
A vertical panorama of some more falls. This is the same creek as flows over the Witches Leap.	There were some interesting half-caves and ledges along the way.	The Three Sisters again, from further away.	Just past the bottom of the scenic railway were some old mine shafts. In fact, the scenic railway was originally for freight, to carry up the ore. Now it shuttles tourists. Anyway, one of the old mine shafts is now an audio-visual presentation, with lit figures down one tunnel and slides being shown down another (off-screen to the left).
This is just before the big landslide; a rocky ledge where I stopped for lunch. The time is now shortly after noon.	I'm surprised I didn't take more pictures of the struggle across the landslide. Maybe I was just too busy. I needed my hands for climbing. Often the >path< (if its not stretching the definition too far to call it that at all) consisted of just piles of rocks that one climbed over in faith that there would be a path on the other side of it. A couple times some strong gusts of wind came close to knocking me down the rocky incline. I took this photo because the black soil intrigued me.	All throughout the trip, there were a fair number of tiny wildflowers. Some pink, some yellow, and some white, but they were all very small.	Here's one view looking down the landslide. See that big, cube-shaped boulder to the lower right? That's at least three meters on a side. Remember that rock; we'll be seeing it again later.
There were some really gorgeous rock formations in the tumbling chaos of the landslide. I wish I hadn't been so stressed about whether or not I was actually on a path; I could have enjoyed the view a lot more.	I distinctly remember taking this photo for the sole reason because I was *so* delighted to be back on an actual, recognizable, trail.	Some interesting windy root/trunk formations.	In this photo, I tried to capture the beauty of standing in a shadowy trail and watching the sun break through the trees up ahead.
If you look closely, you can see the Three Sisters in the upper right corner of this picture. I've come a long way.	I doubt these are edible, but I thought the fiddlehead fern shape was interesting.	This is a four-foot-tall termite mound (didn't see any termites, though) at the base of the Golden Stair (see map). Here I had to make a choice. It was about 1:30, and if I wanted to try to take the Scenic Railway back up to the top, I needed to go back the way I came. I was not thrilled about the prospect of climbing over the landslide again, I can tell you. Alternately, I could go up the Golden Stair and make my way back to town. I'd heard estimates from 30 to 60 minutes for the time to get up to the top of the stair. Thirdly, I could continue on to try to get to my original goal for the day: the Ruined Castle. The sign said this was two hours further down the track. Two hours down, two back, plus the stair seemed daunting, too. However, the sign also said it was two hours back to the railway, and it had only been 90 minutes. So I decided to press on toward the Ruined Castle and see how far I got.	These giant ferns were fascinating. Their trunks could be 20 feet high and 18 inches across, but they still felt very unstable if you bumped against them. As if they would topple over if you gave them a good push. I did not test that hypothesis.
More ferns, of the short variety.	When you could see through the trees, it was a stunning view out over the Blue Mountains.	This is part of the Ruined Castle (I made it after all, and it was more like one hour than two). It's not a real castle, it's a collection of giant boulders. More on that later. To get here, you had to leave Federal Trail and climb up a very steep trail that again went through stretches where you really didn't believe it was a real trail. But it was...	That's the top of the castle up there. I tried to climb up there, but it was just too scary. One badly placed foot, and I could fall and seriously injure myself, and there is no way any expeditious help could arrive. This Swedish couple made it up there, and I tried to follow their route, but they made it by crawling under a rock I didn't think I could fit under. So I crawled back down. That was the scariest part of the whole hike, trying to find the footholds while going backwards and not really being able to see well, all the time berating myself for being an idiot. :-)
I did get to see a lizard after all! I was hoping I would get to see some non-plant and non-insect wildlife, but apart from a couple cockatoos far, far off, this was the only one. A pretty cool little guy, though.	More tiny wildflowers. This is on the way up Golden Stairs, a climb that nearly wore me out. It went zig-zagging hundreds of meters right up the sheer cliff face, and there were a couple sections with cliff on the left, a twelve-inch wide path, and a sheer drop on the right. Exhausting.	Now, here you can see why they call it Ruined Castle. Open the big version of this picture, and look at the top of the hill in the middle of the frame, between the two mesa-like formations. You might have to zoom in a little, but it should be pretty obvious.	Another shot of the Ruined Castle, showing all the forest in between. It was a common feeling all day to look back and think, >I was just over *there* about an hour ago! How did I get so far away?<
Now, this is looking back at the landslide. See those giant cubes down in the lower right corner? You've seen one of those before. Somewhere picking across all that rubble is the trail I followed.	Once I finally got to the top of the stairs, it was about 4:30 pm. But this spectacular view out to the west was a treat for the weary. The Golden Stairs exit out onto a narrow plateau that runs out of Katoomba, falling away to the Jamison Valley to the Southeast and out this way to the Northwest. I don't think the photo can do it justice. I still had a long trek back into town, but luckily I stumbled across a bus when I got to the scenic train station, and that took me back to the center of town. All in all, a highly rewarding but extremely exhausting day.
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