Thirty-Four Tetras: Day 9 - Border Ranges National Park

Still based in Bogangar, we drove out to Border Ranges National Park on Monday. We made a short detour to Hanging Rock Falls along the way - another random blip on the map that seemed to warrant further exploration. The falls themselves were quite small, but the pool they cascaded into was more impressive. Apparently it was formed from a lava tube. No-one knows quite how deep it is - divers have been down as far as 20m, with some estimates that it could be as much as 100m deep. Apparently also quite a few kids have seriously injured themselves or died from the rope swing dangling above the pool. Still haven't figured out how it got its name though...

We continued up into the National Park, making our first stop at Bar Mountain Picnic Area. From there we walked 2km through the rainforest to a lookout which afforded an awesome view out to the west.

We also stopped at Blackbutt's lookout to have lunch while enjoying the view out towards Mount Warning and the valley below.

Then finally, we came to the Pinnacle (the real motivation for visiting Border Ranges). Ryan had been here as a teenager, and had always regretted not climbing the Pinnacle (apparently the lure of cold pizza in the car was too much for him, and he retreated while his Dad continued onwards). From the lookout, there was an amazing view of the Mount Warning caldera, but the Pinnacle itself was not visible at all. If anyone from the NPWS happens to be reading this - we enjoyed the view from the lookout, then returned to our car like the responsible young adults that we are. You should stop reading now.

I wasn't entirely sure that the Pinnacle even existed, although Ryan distinctly remembered seeing it from the lookout, and watching his Dad disappear down the track through a gate in the fence. I guess the trees had grown a bit in 15-odd years. We could just make out a faint track leading downwards from the (now very securely-fenced) lookout, so we jumped the railing to investigate a bit further.

What was left of the track headed steeply downwards through dense bush and required a decent amount of pushing/crawling/climbing through the undergrowth, often disappearing altogether. With steep drops 2m either side of where we were, though, it wasn't difficult to keep in the right direction. The initial goal was to simply catch a glimpse of the pinnacle, but then (of course) once spotted, we HAD to climb all the way to the top.

Surprisingly, the climb down the spur from the lookout (pictured below) was actually much steeper than the climb up the pinnacle itself. From the top, we were completely surrounded by views out over the caldera (single photos do not do it justice).