One Stroke · Walking and sketching routes in Australia
Walking in the Blue Mountains
Sandstone plateau cut by deep valleys, an hour and a half from Sydney, with more genuinely good day walks than a person gets through in a year.
The landscape in one paragraph
A high sandstone plateau has been cut into by rivers, producing steep-sided valleys with vertical cliff lines and forested floors. The walking is therefore either along the tops, down into the valleys, or up out of them.
That structure gives two completely different experiences. Clifftop tracks are mostly level with huge views. Valley routes are steep, enclosed, cool and green, and involve regaining every metre you descended.
The blue haze the range is named for comes from fine droplets released by the eucalypt forest scattering light. On a clear day with the sun behind you it is genuinely blue, and it is the first thing worth trying to draw.
Clifftop routes
The tracks along the escarpment are the accessible half of the region: well graded, well signed, and connected by roads and railway stations so you can walk one way and catch a train back.
They are also where every visitor goes, which means the famous lookouts are crowded on weekends and empty on a Tuesday morning. Walking twenty minutes from any carpark solves most of the crowding.
For drawing, the clifftop is the easier proposition: somewhere to sit, a wide subject, and enough distance that you are composing shapes rather than recording detail.
Into the valleys
The descents are the serious walking. Several historic stairways cut down the cliff line, built for tourism a century ago and maintained since, and they are long, steep and relentless.
Once you are down, the valley floors are rainforest — tree ferns, running water, a completely different temperature. It feels like another region entirely, which is the point.
The climb out is the part to plan around. Descending is fast and deceptive. Budget roughly twice the time for the return, more if it is hot, and start early enough that you are not doing the stairway at dusk.
Canyons and where the line is
The region is famous for slot canyons, and some are accessible to walkers on marked routes. Many are not: they require abseiling, swimming through cold water, and route-finding skills, and people die in them most years.
The distinction matters. A canyon described as a walk-through in good conditions can become impassable after rain, and the entry point looks identical either way.
If you want to do the technical ones, go with a club or a guide the first several times. This is not a place to learn by attempting.
Seasons and conditions
Autumn and spring are ideal. Summer is hot in the valleys and carries fire risk on the plateau; winter is cold, sometimes snowy on the tops, and the shortest days make long routes tight.
After heavy rain, valley creek crossings rise fast and sandstone tracks become slick. Waterfalls are spectacular and the tracks below them are the most dangerous they get.
Fog sits in the valleys regularly and can arrive quickly on the tops. A view that was thirty kilometres deep can close to fifty metres in ten minutes, which matters for navigation as much as for photography.
Getting there without a car
The railway line runs through the middle of the region, and several excellent walks start within a short distance of a station. This is unusual in Australia and worth exploiting.
A one-way walk between two stations removes the car-shuffle problem entirely and is the most civilised way to do a long day here.
Local bus services connect some of the trailheads, with timetables that thin out at weekends. Check the return time before you commit to a long route; being stranded at a trailhead at six in the evening is a specific and avoidable misery.
Safety in steep sandstone
Cliff edges here are often unfenced and the rock breaks away at the lip. The number of incidents involving people stepping past a barrier for a photograph is depressingly steady.
Carry more water than a coastal walk of the same distance would need — the climbs are sustained and the valleys are humid.
Tell someone your route and expected return. Phone coverage exists on the tops and disappears in the valleys, which is precisely where a twisted ankle turns into a serious problem.