I have always been a peak bagger, and, even now, when the hills around me are lower in elevation than my house was at in Canada, I still seem to be drawn to walking to the top. More often than not there is no view, or not much of a view, and the greatest technical difficulty is often ensuring I have actually got to the top, so nondescript are the summits. But, still I go, something about the journey becoming more important the older I get.
In the last week I have been up two of the minor little hills we have in our area. One was with a group of four other friends who I coerced into coming along by advertising the approach paddle as the regular south coast Sunday paddle. Truthfully, I was surprised that anyone would sign up for the Sunday paddle given it was mostly on the river and we usually paddle on the ocean, but, it turned out that none in the group had paddled up the river and were game to do so, at least once.
I have actually paddled up the Clyde River multiple times on training paddles, in fact, that is where I got the idea to walk up Sugarloaf Hill. We met at our home beach at 9 am and had a fussy departure sorting foot pegs and spray skirts finally getting off the beach closer to 10 am than 9 am. I had timed the outing so we would have the tide with us in both directions. It is usually about an hour to the big bridge over the mouth of the Clyde River, where two of our friends in a double kayak left the group as they wanted a shorter paddle.
It is another hour to the confluence with the Buckenbowra River and then only a half hour up the Buckenbowra River until we reached a small inlet where I thought we could get out and stash the kayaks in the bush. Apart from slippery mud on the bank this was easily accomplished.
State forests in NSW have a road on every ridge, so we only had to walk a short distance before we got on an old road that took us right to the top of Sugarloaf Hill. There was much friendly banter, at least I took it as friendly, about the view from the top that I had promised. There was a view, a bit filtered through forest, but we could see east to the Clyde and Buckenbowra Rivers and west to Paradise Valley.
View from Sugarloaf Hill
The paddle back was a good training mission into a 18 knot headwind. There is always a headwind on the Clyde River as far as I can tell.
Boulders on route up Bolaro Mountain
A couple of days later, I thought I might as well check off Bolaro Mountain which is almost twice as high as Sugarloaf Hill but still under 700 metres. I have seen the east side of Bolaro Mountain from a number of other vantage points on runs through Currowan State Forest and knew that there were lots of large granite boulders and slabs on the eastern side.
As usual, a fire trail runs right across the top from the north to the south, but I avoided all but a short approach road and walked up one spur ridge on the east side and down another. It was a pleasant stroll. I had good, if hazy views of the Budawangs on the way up, and was able to scramble up low angle slabs along the way. The top of the mountain has a nice forest of very bright green tree ferns that survived last summer's bushfires. There is also a pretty little creek running with clear water over granite slabs that I explored on the way down.
Arbitrary lists are, by definition, discretionary, some items make the list, others don't. I have had arbitrary lists for as long as I can remember. The first list, was a list of peaks we could see from our condominium in Canmore. This included rocky summits we could just glimpse by climbing on the toilet seat to squint out the bathroom window with binoculars. We spent many long days pursuing these peaks, often on trips that extended past 12 hours long and involved arduous trudges up the giant scree gullies and slopes of the front ranges of the Rocky Mountains. On one particularly noteworthy ascent, I remember a friend and I giggling hysterically from fatigue as we stumbled down a dry creek bed at 9 pm at night.
But that is the fun of arbitrary lists, they encourage to get out and do something out of the ordinary in what is otherwise a familiar environment. Because, as Mark Twight famously said, "if you no longer live in the mountains you have to find meaning in the valley." (not an exact quote).
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