Katoomba: Heart of the Blue Mountains

Anyone visiting Sydney should really make the 100km trip west into the Blue Mountains, which offer an amazing range of activities for all. Katoomba is the heart of the Blue Mountains, being the largest town (of around 10,000, whom our orientation leader claimed were all related), home to the largest railway station in the area, and the home base for most visiting the mountains.

Katoomba's name originally comes from an Aboriginal word meaning "water tumbling over a hill," and the town has a rich heritage of adventurers. You can tell that those in the Blue Mountains are proud of the explorers that first tramped through them—Wentworth, Lawson, and Blaxland—because many towns and natural wonders (like Wentworth Falls) are named for them.

There are a huge number of outdoor activities to be done here. The most famous is the Three Sisters—the spectacular rock formation off Echo Point that thousands seem to flock to every day. At Echo Point, you not only see the Three Sisters but a huge sweep of the Blue Mountains spreading out before you, blue haze drifting up from the gum trees lining the valleys. If you'd like to see the mountains and the Three Sisters from another angle, there is the scenic Skyway, which takes you down in a gondola on a steep descent through the valley; if gondolas aren't your thing, there's a pretty steep railway line nearby.

There are plenty of hikes in and around Katoomba—walking through Katoomba can be a hike in itself if you don't know where you are going! There are plenty of waterfalls to hike to, including Wentworth (slightly out of town) and Katoomba Falls. The Three Sisters and Echo Point aren't that bad of a hike from town either. Rock climbing and abseiling are very popular in this area as well, due to the seemingly infinite number of rock faces to bound up and down! This is definitely a different way to see the beauty of the Blue Mountains, as you are dangling 150m in the air!

The Blue Mountains are definitely a must see if you are anywhere in the Sydney area. While not as well known as the Opera House or the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the whole area is amazing and will probably give you more entertainment than a piece of architecture ever would. You're definitely missing a lot if you miss the Mountains.

Quick Tips:

Don't rush in and out of Katoomba; there is very often fog in the Mountains, which can ruin some of the activities, like the Three Sisters (see Three Sisters at Night) or the Skyway. It's definitely worth staying here a couple days anyways so you can take in the full splendor of everything here.

And really, you can't go wrong with any of the activities you choose here. All of them have their own strong points, but everything I found was enjoyable and worth everything I paid (or, for hikes, all the stairs I had to climb up!).

Best Way To Get Around:

Getting to Katoomba is pretty easy from Sydney—by car, you can take Parramatta Rd west of Sydney, and then get on the Western Motorway, which will take you straight up into the mountains. Take the turnoff for Katoomba. To get here by train, just catch the Intercity? train from central Sydney, and get off at the Katoomba stop—the ride should take around 2 hours. I remember the car ride taking about this long as well, since you can't go all that fast once you start winding your way up into the mountains.

It's easy to walk around Katoomba, although it can get a little tiring, since its all on a slope. The town is pretty much based around a few streets, making it fairly simple to navigate (during the day)! Echo Point is not a terrible distance away, and we managed to make it there at night with only a few detours—if you get good directions before you leave (rather than someone telling you to walk down the wrong street, like we did), you should be able to walk directly from Katoomba to Echo Point without making any turns at all.

For many of the people in my orientation group, it was a bit of a shock going from the Swiss Grand in Bondi to the Blue Mountains YHA in Katoomba; I, however, felt right at home. I heard no end to the complaints from some of the girls in the group because they didn't have private bathrooms. I, on the other hand, thought this was an extremely nice hostel to stay in.Our group had our own little wing of the hostel, which included its own huge lounge room, with at least six or eight sofas in it, along with dinner tables and its own kitchen. I figure that this area is open to normal backpackers when there isn't a huge group staying that night. Our room was off of this large lounge room, in a hall with two or three other rooms and two bathrooms, one with a toilet and one with a toilet and a shower. The bathrooms were very clean (at least, before some of the idiots in our group got to them). The rooms were nice as well; our room had four bunk beds and plenty of extra room, since none of us had much luggage at all. There was also a pretty good view—mostly of fog, which started creeping in in the evening.The main hostel also had very good facilities—there was a huge kitchen area with lots of room to cook and plenty of nice tables with benches to sit at. There was a large Internet area as well. To use this, we had to pay for a certain amount of time at the front desk and then put the code on the computer. People that weren't staying in the YHA even came in to use the Internet, although I'm not sure if they were allowed to or not. There were also a few pay phones, although it was difficult to use phone cards here since the call to Sydney was long distance, and the toll-free numbers on the card ate up money very quickly.The hostel was nicely situated towards the end of one of the main streets in Katoomba, aptly named Katoomba Street. To get to anything in Katoomba itself, you really just had to walk out the front door, turn left, and walk up the hill. It is very close to bus routes and the train station, and since it is the main hostel in Katoomba, most of the major bus tours use this hostel as accommodation.The price of the hostel was included in our study abroad package, but I saw the rates and they were a reasonable $26 a night, including the YHA fee. This hostel was definitely a great value for money and I don't see why anyone would pay more to stay anywhere else (unless you want to stay somewhere historical, in which case The Carrington is your best bet).

Wentworth Falls is not actually in Katoomba, but is a much smaller and less-known town about 10 minutes away. There are many tracks here of various levels of difficulty, all of which offer spectacular views across miles and miles of the mountains, and many of which offer views of Wentworth Falls. The Falls themselves are named for William Wentworth, one of the group of three that first explored the Blue Mountains.We had a guide, provided for us by our orientation, that walked with us along our trail, which was one to the bottom of the falls. The walk down didn't take exceptionally long, definitely less than an hour, even with all of our stops at various viewing platforms. However, it was pretty much just straight down stairs, which made us all very excited for the walk back up. The views from the trail really were amazing, and the mountains really did look blue—something our guide told us happens because the chemicals that eucalyptus release take on a blue tint when there are enough of them together.The base of the falls was the best part of the hike. We were all a bit disgusting and sweaty, since the middle-of-February sun was beating down on us, and there was a nice waterfall right in front of us. After obviously taking our guide's warning about the water being cold to heart, a couple people in my group, including me, jumped right in. I immediately jumped back out again. The water was the coldest water I have ever been in—I know it was above freezing, but it couldn't have been more than 50 degrees, at most. After a bit of coaxing, I got back in again and ended up swimming under the waterfall and back. After you get over the initial oh-my-god-I'm-going-to-die feeling, it really did feel quite refreshing! I wouldn't recommend it on any other than a hot day in the middle of the summer though. We did see a man abseiling down the falls in a wetsuit though, and that looked like it was a blast. I definitely would have enjoyed trying that.The walk back up was a little rougher than the walk down, since it was just climbing stairs for what felt like at least an hour. Luckily, I was soaking wet, so I wasn't nearly as miserable as some of the other climbers. There is a hut part of the way up with restrooms, and which, more importantly, sells ice-cream. I had a nice mango sorbet to help me up the rest of the path.The falls weren't the most spectacular falls I've ever seen, or even the most spectacular I've seen in the Blue Mountains, but having a dip in them combined with the brilliant views made this walk well worth the trip.

The second day of our trip in the Blue Mountains was abseiling day. We went abseiling with the Australian School of Mountaineering, which provided their services to our study abroad group at a very discounted rate. Since this was provided as part of our orientation, I'm not sure how much it would have normally cost, but I think the going rate for a day of abseiling is around $100 in Katoomba.

We were picked up in two separate groups and taken to the area of the mountains we were going to be abseiling in. I was in the second group, which meant I got less abseiling for the day, but I didn't really have much control over this since we had such a large group. Our drive to the site involved a stop at a lookout, where we saw Bridal Veil Falls and more sweeping views of the mountains. When we finally got to the site, we were thoroughly briefed in exactly what we were going to do, and given appropriate equipment, including belts, helmets, and gloves. We were also told numerous times that if someone yells "Rock!", DON'T LOOK UP!

At the actual climb site, there were plenty of different rock walls we could climb up, but we were started on a very small wall that was easily accessible. Here, we were trained on both abseiling down the wall and holding the rope for others that are abseiling. I knew literally nothing about abseiling before this trip, yet, after listening to what the guides had to say, seeing their demonstrations, and then trying it out for myself on a less scary cliff than say, one 160m tall, I felt comfortable moving on to larger cliffs. The guides were very knowledgeable and obviously knew exactly what they were doing; not only that, but they also knew exactly how to impart this information.

Once we were all declared ready to go, we got to join the rest of our group on the real walls. There were about six different ropes, with each two tended by one of the school instructors at both the top and the bottom. This meant that although we were trained on holding the rope correctly, we were never actually asked to do it. That was definitely a relief for me, because I didn't exactly trust myself to take someone else's safety into my own hands.

The different rock walls offered different challenges; one was a fairly straightforward wall, except there was a giant tree you had to avoid, one was an easy abseil down until the wall literally disappeared (or so it seemed from the top—the wall actually just fell away 4 or 5 feet, so it required a big bound to get to it), and the last one was the tallest and offered an opportunity to have a bit more fun, like jumping down in bounds rather than slowly walking down the wall.

This review is continued in Australian School of Mountaineering, pt 2.

This is a continuation of my Australian School of Mountaineering review.Something that definitely provided more excitement was attempting to find our way back up from the bottom of the cliffs. There was plenty of foliage to pick our way through, along with a few rocky slopes, and once we waded through all this we got to climb up a very rickety ladder. Of course, it was lashed to the cliff and I'm sure it was quite sturdy, but I definitely felt much more scared climbing up this than rappelling down the rock walls!After we got a chance to try out all the walls, some of them multiple times, we were served lunch. It included plenty of fruit and sandwich fixings, along with some salad. There wasn't quite enough for our whole group, but we couldn't complain because it was being provided by the ASM.After lunch, we got to move on to much more fun (or crazy, depending on your mindset) activities. The two largest cliffs that were climbable in this area were 160m tall, and now was our chance to abseil down them. The cliff that I was on, which was the cliff to the left of the little canyon with the ladder, was the slightly tamer one, although it was just as tall. I abseiled down it with my friend, and while it was a bit terrifying at first, after we stopped ourselves from looking down quite so much, it was actually pretty fun. I just had to remember to keep my hand behind me so it didn't get tangled up in my carabiner--not a nice idea.The right hand cliff offered a bit more, for those of us with a wild streak. On this cliff, you could choose whether to abseil normally, or go down face first. This involved sitting on the edge of the cliff and then letting go; you could slow your progress on the way down by grabbing the rope, but it seemed that most people liked to reach terminal velocity. It was extremely entertaining to watch this, although I wouldn't go anywhere near it—I felt safe on my cliff, and I intended to stay that way.Even crazier than this was our orientation leader. He knew these guys pretty well and had been abseiling for many years during orientation, so he seemed to have lost all inhibitions whatsoever. They were filming a video throughout our orientation to advertise our study abroad program, and he got Gil, one of the main climbing instructors, to film him talking about the program and then all of a sudden, flipping over and abseiling upside down! Needless to say, they didn't let us try this, but it was enjoyable to watch nonetheless.I thoroughly enjoyed my trip with the Australian School of Mountaineering; more importantly, I felt completely safe in their hands, which made the excursion all the more enjoyable. This was definitely a different (and much more exciting) way to see the Blue Mountains!

While most people visit the Three Sisters during the day, they are said to look brilliant at night, when they are floodlit, as well. Since our orientation did not, for some reason, include any visit at all to the Three Sisters (why not, when we were staying in Katoomba?!), my two friends and I decided to make the trek.Unfortunately, the only time we weren't tied up in orientation activities was 10pm on a bit of a misty night, after a few drinks at dinner. We were determined to see the Sisters though, because we knew that after leaving for Brisbane in a few days, we probably wouldn't be back. So we asked the orientation director for directions to the Sisters, and he pointed down Katoomba Road, the opposite direction from town, and told us to be careful. Then we were off.The road was not particularly well lit once we got past the police station, and it soon began curving in the opposite direction to the Sisters. We stopped into a hotel and asked for directions, and after being given CORRECT directions, we managed to wind our way over where the Sisters should have been.However, once we got out to the platform at Echo Point, we got a bit of a horrible surprise. The mist had been thickening all night, and it had by now turned into a thick fog, through which you could only see about 5 feet in front of you. Needless to say, we saw the Three Sisters really clearly—on the sign with a picture of them. The orange floodlight illuminated the fog quite well, I must say.We stayed for awhile, attempting to peer through the fog, but we finally gave up. We took the closest road that we were fairly certain led in the direction of Katoomba, and found that there really was a very simple way to get from town to Echo Point—walking directly down Echo Point Road, which turns into Lurline Street and is parallel to Katoomba Street.While we still had fun wandering through Katoomba at night, it was very sad that we didn't get to see the Sisters at all. If it's not foggy, I would definitely recommend making the trek (on Lurline Street, not Katoomba Street). As spectacular as the Sisters are during the day (as I found out when I managed to actually see them 10 months later), I'm sure they are amazing in a totally different sort of way at night. Just make sure fog hasn't set in for the night before you go!