Larkin's Gap and Doyle's Pinnacle

I suppose our de fact policy is that not all day-walks get blogged here, though we do try to do entries for all the multi-day walks that most of us are on. But we have been doing a few day walks in the parts of the Morton National Park near Bundanoon, since there is a Sons outpost in Bundanoon these days. Various trips into the Bundanoon Gorge and along Meryla Plateau attempting to get down have happened. So here is a representative entry - our recent trip to find Larkin's Gap down to the creek, and
climb Doyle's Gap up to Doyle's Peak.

Sadly our usual photoblogographer, me, was cameraless that day. But others pitched in with their phones and compacts so I have a few pics to choose from!

We all met up at the excellent Bicycle Shoppe Cafe and headed off to start of the walk, not far from the local Thai Bhuddist Forest Monastery.

Here's the traditional start-out shot of the party



We headed down a firetrail until reaching an old mine works, at which point we started down the ridge which leads to Larkin's Gap. The ridge is easy walking through dry sclerophyll forest with a surprising number of parasitic trees. Eventually you get to the cliff line and the search for the pass began. We had a false start; we descended on to a series of ledges until we realized we could go no further and had to return.

Here we are pondering the map (sadly Paul lost this map on the way back: any readers see a nice map holder with a copy of Bundanoon 1:25K should send it to the philosophy dept at Sydney Uni for the attention of the Chair -- or even better keep it if you promise to do lots of walks in the map area!)



In the end the Gap turned out to be a gully that some of us thought was the next creek gully along. Mostly it was an easy descent, but there is one section of fallen timber that slows you down a little. Here we are some of us negotiating that. Daniela's red hat is becoming iconic..



Eventually we get to the creek itself:



And them it's onwards and upwards along a nice easy dry slope. Eventually you come to a cliff where you need to contour along. We took a brief break:



Then you cross the head of a gully and get to Doyle's Pinnacle. There it's time to climb the pinnacle. Here we are climbing it. Note Paul and I going safely up the crack. To the right there's an exposed thin slice of rock which of course Daniela just shot up like a mountain goat.



And then we were on top!





Some great views of the Bundanoon Creek:



And here we all are bar Adrian (who is behind the camera)



Daniela in typical rock-top pose hiding under her hat:



Then time to descend



Here we are resting at the creek



All went to plan from then on, and much Bundanoon Pizza was eaten!