Cox's River

I caught the train up to Katoomba on Thursday night, arriving at 11pm, and joined the others in a motel - they'd driven up from Wollongong earlier, and had dinner.

morning fog, looking down Breakfast Creek

We woke up around 5.45 on the Friday morning, got underway around 6.30, and drove out to the Dunphy car park in Megalong valley, arriving around 7.20. It was bitterly cold starting off - around 4 degrees - but once we got walking it wasn't too bad. We made good time down to Breakfast Creek and then up Blackhorse Ridge, stopping briefly for a view from the lookout, and then steamed along Yellow Dog ridge, getting to the bottom of Yellow Pup around 2pm.

The original plan had been to climb Guouogang on the Saturday, descending the Krungle Bungles to Breakfast Creek, and with time to spare we were contemplating climbing up and camping on the saddle behind Mt Konangaroo. But some of the party weren't really prepared for that, either gear-wise (they had heavy packs) or psychologically. And we became a little confused around the junction of Kanangra Creek and the Cox's river. So we ended up in a lovely campsite by Kanangra Creek, right at the bottom of Strongleg.

The other goal of the walk had been to give Vic a chance to test his new ultralight 750gm sleeping bag. This first night there didn't seem to be any major problems.

The next day was a fairly easy walk up the Cox's, crossing backwards and forwards several times. We camped just upstream from the Breakfast Creek junction.

This time there were requests for spare clothing before nightfall, cries of pain during the night, and ice on the tent flies in the morning...

We got back to the car at 11, and reached Katoomba after noon.

We had to hunt around a bit for a cafe that had an all day breakfast and a spare table -- Sunday lunchtime is pretty busy in Katoomba -- but find one we did and all five of us were soon tearing into eggs, toast, sausages, tomato, hash browns, and bacon.