Sunday, September 18, 2011

The Grampians

Mt Difficult
I was a nice spring day mid September when we decided to give this a go. There were the usual suspects in the group, myself, Brent, Kev, we welcomed back young Jonah and for the first time Brents wife Rebecca decided to come along.
We arrived at the Troopers Creek picnic area at 9.30 and knew that we weren't going to be alone on today's walk as the car park was chokers.
As we looked up we could see the mountain range towering overhead as the excitement started to kick in. Awaiting us were huge cliff faces, massive rock climbs and large overhangs, I couldn't wait.
We set off immediately, passing the "Strenuous Walking Ahead" sign following a well defined track. I wasn't long and we were making our assent. The cliffs were amazing. We were walking along the edge of he mountain slowly making our way up.
We were scaling massive boulders, shimmering through tight ravines while trying to take in the amazing views.
At 10.30 we stopped for a break at nice spot with water running down the side of the mountain and great scenery to the west.







We left this tranquil spot and continued the journey up the mountain until at 11.30 we had reached the Mt Difficult Hikers Camp site. The camp site was very rocky and you could probably squeeze a couple of tents in if you had to but I didn't think it was that fantastic.





We dumped our packs amongst the many others that were already there and made the 15min climb to the summit.


It was a little windy but the views from the top were great and we spent about 20min up there tacking a few photos.
We made our way back down to the camp site, boiled up some water for coffee and had some lunch.


At 12.45 we started our decent via the same route, passing many large groups of hikers with there double walking poles and knee high gators.


We saw a large stumpy tail lizard on the way down and stopped once again at the waterfall for a quick spell.


After Kev took a nice little fall we got back to the car by 2.40 and cracked a ice cold Pepsi max.



We had loaded young Jonah up with a 12kg pack to see how he would go with the climb. He wants to join us later in the year for the 3 day trek up Bogong. Jonah passed with flying colors.


I didn't really think this walk lived up to its name. It had great views, huge cliffs and large rock overhangs. Challenging but far from difficult. An amazing walk, would do it again.