Climb Mt Bruce Day 7 of our 11 day tour camping tourSunday Climb Mt Bruce. I cook up some baked beans to go with our cereal and toast. Not too sure if this is such a wise move because we have to trek up the mountain today – maybe the effects of the baked beans will “push us along a bit”. There are a few apprehensive people about their ability to walk all the way, but we are all starting out with good intentions. It doesn’t matter if we don’t all make it; there are some lovely views to be had along the way. Mt Bruce is the second largest mountain in Western Australia at 1235 metres. (Mt Meharry is 16 metres taller - but it is inaccessible). The brochure rates the walk up Mt Bruce as a level 1, class 4. This means they are for experienced, fit walkers. Trails may be unmarked and go over steep, slippery and unstable surfaces. Few, if any, improvements have been made. It also says the walk to the summit is a 9km walk and 6 hour return. Our itinerary where you can climb Mt Bruce with us.
Mt Bruce
We headed off with plenty of water and something to eat and of course the cameras and just a little bit stiff from the day before but an excitement of this huge mountain we are going to try to conquer. We had not travelled too far and off to our right we saw Marandoo Mine. This is a huge mining operation in Tom Price and the ore is railed to Dampier for shipping overseas. As we were walking up Mt Bruce, still relatively gradually at this stage, we were looking all around us at the vast array of flora and fauna but continually looking over at the mine. During one of these looks towards Marandoo we saw a train coming from Newman to travel through Tom Price onto Dampier to unload. We stopped walking and started to count the carriages of the train. We gave up when we got up to 200 and we were not even half way through counting the carriages – it was veeeeeery long. We got as far as Honey Hakea which is 2.5km from when we started. The walk at this stage was alternating between very steep to a relatively gradual incline. We stopped here for a bit of a rest and something to eat; we had been drinking our water as needed up to this stage anyway. The view here gave us a great site of the mulga surrounding Mount Bruce. Continuing on we came to a steep rocky section with a couple of rock cairns to show us the way. At one stage we had to actually walk around the face of a huge rock. There are chains hammered into the rocks here for safety because - if you fell it was good bye. (It was quite safe though). After negotiating our way around the chains we then came to a fissure in the rock we had to climb up. This was vertical and obviously for safety reasons we took our time here. By this time, we were well and truly over 3/4 of the way and we were starting to feel the pinch a bit. We eventually made it to the summit and the view of the landscape was absolutely spectacular. We saw an eagle soaring way down below us. We saw the road we drove on to get to the base of the mountain and way; way down there we saw a car towing a caravan. It looked like a little ant or maybe a little toy car like the kids have.
Crikey, We Made It to the top of Mt Bruce!!! We took our obligatory photos, had something to eat and drink, signed in the book that we had made it (noting the last date someone else had reached the top was 5 days before) and felt fairly pleased with ourselves and started back the same way we came. On the way back we saw a young couple walking up who said they were going all the way. (I hope they made it). We saw an older couple who had stopped for coffee and cake and they said they had gone far enough and were going back down. We were all fairly well knackered but at the same time very pleased with ourselves for “conquering the mountain”. We arrived back at our camping site and some of us walked down to Joffre Falls and had a swim in this lovely pool. Joffre Falls is only about a 10 minute walk from our camp. I cooked up some chicken schnitzel and vegies for dinner and we had some fruit salad to finish off. (I thought I was a big eater – well I am but I think Tom might put me to shame. It is always great when people enjoy your food). Once again we were spell bound by the “travelling stars” (satellites) and feeling pretty smug about our achievement. I let everyone know that we have more physical work tomorrow, so we “hit the hay” and called it a night. Table of Contents includes Mt Bruce |
