Mountain Climbing

Thats 'The Pyramid'. Its about 25kms south of Cairns on the outskirts of a small sugar town called Gordonvale. Its 922metres tall and I read somewhere once that its the tallest free standing mountain in the southern hemisphere (dunno if thats true or not). When I was younger and lived in the area I climbed it quite a few times but never took a camera to take some photos of the views you get from the mountain - this time I did. That pic above however I didn't take but I wanted to show the mountain in all its glory. Its a tough climb as its very steep in some spots and its hard go get good footing on some of the rock faces. I can't imagine how people run up and down! My mate and I started yesterday (Saturday) at about 2pm and it was still very hot and humid and both took 4 litres of water each.

That pic above is the view from about 1/4 of the way up and is looking out towards Cairns. If you look carefully you can see Cairns in the very centre of the photo. The houses on the bottom left is the township of Gordonvale. We got to this point at about 2-30pm and had already gone through about 1 litre of water and were absolutely drenched from sweat. My mate who was starting to struggle said 'keep going - I wont get lost. I'll just keep following your trail of sweat'.

That pic shows some of the rock faces you have to scale to climb the mountain. You can't really get a sense of how steep that one is but believe me it was tough - especially if your shoes don't have much grip.

That pic is from the very top and is looking south out onto the Great Diving Range. It was pretty scary taking that photo because I was standing right on the edge of a rocky ledge and its gets very blowy at the top. We got to the top at about 4-15pm and had a 30min break before we came back down. The views you get from the top are amazing. It was a bit cloudy yesterday which is unfortunate because when its a clear day you can almost see forever. There was times that I had to wait 5/10mins because a cloud would pass and I literally couldn't see anything.

This photo is the same as the second but taken from the very top. Its a bit annoying trying to take pics from the top because those trees get in the way. They need a tree lopper to come and cut them down! I've got a heap more photos which I will post in the next few days. For the record we got back to the car at exactly 6-00pm. So exluding our 30min break the whole exercise took 3hrs 30mins - the annual Pyramid Race (up and down with a 4km out and back run to the start line) is done in 1hr 20mins.