At The Farm: The Climb

On our third and last day at Uluru we woke up early again (530am) and drove out to the rock in hope of ‘them’ letting us climb it. We were pretty sure it would not happen, but it was a Saturday morning and perhaps they would open it for the extra tourists expected. During December to March even if it is open to climb, you have to start before 8am.

We were driving up to the car park and expecting to find it closed when Corinne spotted some small humanlike figures climbing the rock, silhouetted against a feint dawn. She squealed with delight.

From the ground, the climb looks steep and goes up a flatter side of the rock. There are chains a lot of the way up to hold onto or pull yourself up with. Once you get a short way up the rock, you discover that it is far steeper then you realised and that you are far less fit than you thought. We had read that the climb was hard and people fall and get heat stroke and have heart attacks etc. It wasn’t until we were halfway up, clinging to the chains that we realised it really is quite hard and there are some precipitous spots where there is a just a ridge of rock about a metre wide with one hundred metre cliffs on each side.

So you finally get to the top of the chains, where the rock starts to flatten out a bit. This part is exciting, mostly because you can get you breath back but also because you start crossing the top of the rock, walking towards the cairn on the other side that is the end of the path. The rock is actually very heavily eroded by wind and rain and is not smooth at all on a large scale. There are many undulations and ridges, water courses (dry) on the rock. The are actually lots of little ponds that fill up with rain and support some of the bird life that flits about up there as well as the flies, mossies etc.

We made it to the cairn, only the second lot of people, close behind some shirtless Germans. The view is amazing, you can see the olgas off in the distance and small mountain ranges out on the flat plains that make up the area. Lots of green spinifex, mulga, acacias etc and red sand. There are actually trees/bushes growing in part on the rock, in small crevices filled with dust and dirt, again not something you expect to find.

The walk down was easier than we thought. We were worried that it was so steep that is may be hard to go down standing up, but it was just the right angle to allow us to walk down, only gripping the chain in a few spots. It was quite pleasurable to walk past the sweating, panting, pained faces of the people coming up. The sun was high already and the temperatures were soring. There were girls with hand bags, pumps (shoes, Corinne tells me), no water, sunscreen, hats etc. We were amazed at the lack of thought that went into some of the peoples outfits.

Corinne is very happy she has climbed the rock and we would recommend it to anyone, except for its difficulty, which i would rate as high.