Mount Solitary – Western Side.

Having done the eastern side awhile back I figured this side is actually a bit easier, that is the case, however with the road closure at Narrow Neck it means you gotta walk down the Furber steps at Katoomba falls which actually makes for a fairly long walk, 26km return for me.

It is a really nice walk with the majority along fairly flat shady forested bits, the descent down is a bit brutal but the actual ascent at Mount Solitary is worse, having walked 8 kms or so and then having to scramble up 300m elevation certainly had my cardio quota done for the day.

I picked a campsite at the very peak, or at the very least the highest point which is 974 metres, there is not really a peak, more of a mellow plateau. Its a really nice spot to camp, plenty of shade but also some nice view between the trees, alot different to the campsite at Chinamans Gulley which is a bit further on.

I tried out a new little stove and cook pot set by Soto (Windmaster) which is pretty cool, very compact and very light, also reasonably priced for Japanese engineering 🙂 it actually did quite well in a stiff breeze too. Highly recommend it..

I also tested out a new tent, the Durston X-dome, which comes in at a bit under 1.5kg for a pretty spacious 2 person tent with full inner. Its not a bad tent, does have a few items that take a bit of getting used to, but at that weight I can live with those. The outer fly does seem to ride up a bit high on the inner, however I have no issues with water getting in and I had a pretty wild storm that night to test it out. It actually ended up with water between the ground sheet and the tent which had been blown in horizontally… the inside of the tent stayed dry tho and thats what counts.

The attached images are just a dump of a lot of pictures I took along the way – i think i used the excuse to take photos as a way to rest my poor knees 🙂

In any case there are plenty of shots to give any potential suckers an idea of what the walk looks like 🙂