Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Steep Trails of Australia: Mount Baldy

Actually, Mount Baldy, near Atherton in Far North Queensland isn't really that steep a trail, it's steep, but not crazy steep like some others. But, this blog post would have been way too short with one picture of the view from Mount Baldy today and description of the short trail (fast folks could go up and down in an hour) to the top.

Mistakenly, I did think that when we moved to Australia, steep trails (think of the trail from Henrietta Lake up towards Mt Sedgwick) would be a thing of the past, but, one of the first overnight bushwalks we did – the Kedumba Circuit in the Blue Mountains – featured an incredibly steep descent from Mount Solitary down to the Kedumba River. One of those descents that you are glad you are not going up, and have to lower yourself from tree to tree to avoid a long sliding fall all the way down.

Of course, the trail up Bartle Frere is steep, probably more so from the east than the west, but I've only been up from the west and have no intention of going up from the east. My theory is that these steep trails were never actually built, they just evolved from people walking that route, and, at some point, the National Parks took them on and wacked a few trail markers on trees but did nothing else.

Anyway, today we walked up Mount Baldy. I had been up before in a rain storm and seen nothing. This time it was pretty clear and there is a nice view of Atherton. You can do it in an easy 1.5 hours. Take the Herberton Road from Atherton and turn onto Rifle Range Road.

Atherton From Mount Baldy

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