With yesterday’s temperatures hitting the high 30s we made sure to be on our way early to climb Mt Warrnilla. Getting out of bed at the crack of dawn, I convinced some mice to get off our stove so that I could brew the mandatory two cups of morning coffee (note: the two cups are for me. Kerrie doesn’t drink coffee). Another spectacular morning greeted us with a magnificent sunrise...
...and rabbits frolicking at the shore of Lake Nuga Nuga. So much for no rabbits in Queensland.
It was a short cycle to the bottom of Mt Warrnilla and we had no choice but to make it to the top. No choice, because the day before we had talked to a couple of guys who, after several tries, actually made it to the top. How embarrassing would it be if we ran into them again one day and we had to admit we didn’t make it to the top.
Aboriginal legend tells of two Rainbow Serpents, the Mundagurra, having formed lake Nuga Nuga and that now they live under Mt Warrnilla and its neighbouring mountain. Keeping that in mind, we treaded lightly not to wake or annoy them.
Starting on the southeastern side of the mountain we began heading up a scree slope and although it wasn’t yet 7am we started to sweat with Kerrie noticing a rancid odour, only to realise that it was us. We had two directions for the ascent, one was from a blog that Kerrie read somewhere (she reads many blogs), which described a hard climb up from the south. The other was from the two guys yesterday who found a way up from the southwest side of the mountain.
The views across the lake and the valley are already spectacular from two thirds of the way up, so even if you don’t make it all the way up it is definitely worth it.
Veering left once we reached the rock wall, which looked unscalable (at least by us), we came to a crevice that looked sorta do-able. I had a bit of a go at it and must say, looked very elegant during that attempt.
Half way up I decided that this may not be the best idea and came back down again. We continued along the rockface, not telling Kerrie that if we didn’t find a better spot we would return to this crevice and have another go at it (i.e. we will get up). Passing a sheer rock wall...
...which would have been a challenge for even very experienced climbers, we came upon another crevice, which looked a lot more promising. Being at the southwest corner of the mountain now, this obviously was the way the other two went. We even came across some cairns showing the way up.
A nice large cave rewarded us halfway up the crevice and it provided nice cool shelter from the soaring temperatures.
From here it was a skip and a hop to get to the top.
The top is covered by trees, but when circumnavigating the top it is hard to tell which view is the best. Once again the reward far outweighs the effort.
We had a short break and started our descent, through the same crevice that we came up on. From then we did not follow our ascent route, but started heading straight down the mountainside. The rainbow serpent must have been amused by us sliding down our backsides as we heard a small landslide not far from us that sounded like a rumble of laughter.
The whole hike was only 2km but it took us over 2 hours, including lots of stops for photos. It was definitely one of the highlights of our holiday so far.
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