Thursday, 14 April 2011

Mt Gillen Climb

 

On our last day off together we decided to do a bit of exercise and climb Mt Gillen.

Mt Gillen is a small hill down the road from us along the West MacDonald range.  We don’t know exactly if it is the green hill in front of the escarpment or if it is the escarpment itself, but we certainly climbed up something and it was quite steep and hard.

The walks starts off from John Flynn’s grave on Larapinta drive.

We walked through typical scrubby bush land, crossing dry creek beds and seeing lots of beautiful purple wild flowers.  The blood woods are flowering at the moment too and are overflowing with yellow fluffy flowers and nectar which smells of honey. 

Eventually we started climbing and the path becomes rough and steep, to the point where it is hard to stand up.  The walk was actually far more tiring than we thought and by the time we got to the top we were pretty knackered.  There are beautiful views from the top of Alice and the West Macs.  You can actually keep climbing higher up towards the escarpment but we didn’t. 

The climb was well worth it and gave great views of the surrounding country.

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Very pretty wild flowers that are all over the place.  Responding very well to the recent rains and flowering in Autumn.

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A view along our path.  We climbed the small hill on the left of the photo.  Actually quite high.

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The escarpment of the West Macs

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Corinne halfway up the hill with Alice in the background

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A great little scene through some intersecting valleys.

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Lizard, sunning himself on the hill.

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Corinne looking out over Alice.

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Bloodwood in full bloom

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A panorama of our walking spot

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A very wide panorama of the view from the top of Mt Gillen.


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