Shangri La, Mount Kailash, and the Kowmung River

I dipped my toes in the Kowmung the other day. That's been a mystical, mythical name to me for many years. I haven't yet made it to the other places, or to Lhasa or Timbuktu, but with the Kowmung River now ticked off, I'm well on my way.

I spent three days with bushwalking friend Bob in the Kanangra Boyd National Park, about 200km west of Sydney. I'd been to the park once before, 11 years ago on a bushwalking club expedition, but we'd headed out quickly on the three day wilderness hike to Katoomba.

On this trip we camped for a couple of nights at the pleasant and well appointed Boyd River camping area, and did day walks to see various bits of the remote park. 

The day we went down to the beautiful Kowmung River was one of the biggest bushwalking days of my life. We covered 28km, with ascents and descents of over 1000m, and much time stumbling around looking for seemingly vanished tracks. It was quite exhausting, and we put the navigational problems down to the National Parks Service's policy of deliberately not signposting some tracks, and having them removed from the maps, so as to have fewer tracks to maintain. (They'd say it was actually to reduce environmental impacts too, I guess.) Anyway we eventually made it down there, along the (still marked) Roots Ridge track, and made it back up before dark, in time for a nice evening in front of the campfire, eating freeze-dried cardboard and watching the stars come out.

It was a nice break, and I plan to get back there again a bit sooner next time.

N

(2nd photo taken by Bob Seibright)