Mt Greville viewed from the Lake Moogerah picnic ground

It is that time again! Bush walk time! Today we climbed Mt Greville which is one of the four peaks in the Moogerah Peaks National Park. Teresa from Horizon Guides showed us the way. This is what we were expecting:

Walk 5: Waterfall Gorge – Mt Greville (Mt Greville NP) 6 – 7 hrs. Moderate – challenging.
Rough and rocky.
Date: Sunday 29th April 6th May
Description: This rugged little peak is one of the gems of the Fassifern. It has such wonderful diversity of habitat, flora and fauna that every turn in the track is a surprise. The route ascends the peak via Waterfall Gorge threading through a jumbled array of rocks between narrow towering cliffs that protect Piccabeen palms and giant White Beech trees. Emerging from the Gorge the route crosses the forested ridge to a magnificent lookout before joining the walking track to the summit. The return route to the vehicles brings us back through heath-land and over rhyolite slabs that support hoya, ferns and orchids and on through open forest to complete the circuit.

This walk was originally planned for last weekend however as it bucketed down with rain on the Saturday and Sunday was quite overcast, the walk was postponed until today. This presented me with a bit of a dilemma. You see, today is also my mother-in-law’s birthday and we were going to go out for breakfast to celebrate that. So I had a choice to make – breaky with the mother-in-law or a bush walk. Decisions, decisions…

So being the dutiful son-in-law that I am, I struggled with this for a very long five seconds and chose the bush walk.

We were to meet at Mt Alford but I wanted to get a picture of Mt Greville for the blog so I drove to Lake Moogerah first and took the photo shown above. This is when I realised I had my camera but no memory card. The memory card was still in the computer at work back in Ipswich. Damn!

Luckily I had my iPad with me so I was able to use that. So please excuse the quality of the photos in today’s post. I lugged the iPad along and only took it out of my pack when we were having a break.

We all met at Mt Alford before driving to the car park at the bottom of Mt Greville. There were four new faces in today’s group. Well, I was probably the new face as these folk had done walks with Teresa well before I started doing them. Nevertheless it is one of the really nice things about these walks – meeting people from different walks of life. They are all lovely people.

It was a glorious day. A bit brisk to start with, I think the temperature dropped to six degrees early in the morning. But the sky was clear and the air was still. We donned our packs and set off around 8:30am. The route to the summit was via Waterfall Gorge. It was quite beautiful in the gorge – so quiet and peaceful.

The rock walls of the gorge

Going down into the gorge

The creek flowing through the gorge is crystal clear and beautiful

Taking in the many sights along the way

When we came out of the gorge, we were treated to the most spectactular view. We stopped on a rocky outcrop for morning tea and just took in the views. I think most of us could have stayed there all day, lounging back on the rocks in the warm sunshine.

Spectacular rock formations up here

Lake Moogerah – the white flecks on the water are boats. This is the reverse of the photo at the top of the page.

We still have to get up there……

But there is no rest for the wicked. Or for the rest of us. Teresa had us on our feet and heading up to the summit. I’m not sure about the others but my legs were fairly well screaming at me by the time we got there. We skirted to the left of the peak shown in the above photo then climbed the ridge to the top. We got there right on 12:00 noon so it took three hours to climb with another half hour spent having morning tea.

Mt Greville is not as high as we were on previous walks (circa 767m) but we had gained approx 550m in elevation from the car park.

The views from the summit were hampered by the trees but it was a good place to stop for lunch. We sat around a large cairn of rocks while Teresa boiled the billy.

The summit…

View from the top through the trees

The billy boiling

Lake Moogerah way down there

Mt Edwards on the right

We stayed at the summit for an hour before leaving. We returned to the cars via the South East Ridge which offered spectacular views on the way down. We crossed quite a few rocky slabs on the way down and in places the scree was a bit treacherous however we all got back in one piece. I think we got back in two hours.

Spicer’s Peak in the distance

Mt Moon

A brief rest spot and a chance for a photo

It was a great day. I arrived back home tired but so glad I did this walk. I am itching to go on the next walk now.

Oh and I did catch up with my mother-in-law and wish her a happy birthday………. 🙂