Mount Maroon

Its three weeks between club walks this month which is a long time without a walk so I gave Colin a call on Friday and suggested we walk up Mt Maroon on Saturday. Colin is always keen for a challenging walk so he gladly accepted. This is not a very popular walk with the club as it involves an almost vertical ascent of 600 meters to the summit on what you would not call ideal walking tracks. So it is always a good walk to do as a private ‘off club’ walk.

It was a very brisk 6 degrees as we left home so we knew it would be cold on the summit of Mt Maroon which is 400 meters higher than Tamborine Mountain. We were very surprised when we went to park in the small parking area at the base of Mt Maroon, cars everywhere so we had to squeeze in to be able to park, its normally deserted.
I have been teaching myself how to use the clubs GPS, using the instruction book and any other bits of information I could gather from talking to people and off the web. I think I have mastered the basics so before I left home I took the grid references of Maroon’s summit from a map and transferred them into the GPS. At the car park I marked our position there into the GPS so if we got lost I should be able to get us back to the car. Most of the track to the summit is very obvious but there are sections where it is possible to wander off plus we also wanted to walk to the second peak (no trail at all) before we walked back down to the car so it was fairly important that we had a reference to get back to.

The track lead off from the car park across a cow paddock and then up a lightly wooded ridge before the huge boulders and rocky outcrops start, then the going gets tougher. We found a nice spot with views about halfway up the ridge for smoko. Not long after smoko we managed to miss a turn and finished off the track and too far south, this then required a traverse as I knew from past walks that the only access to the summit from this side is up the gorge. We found the gorge and then continued up what I would consider the hardest section. We saw a couple of rock climbers to our right doing it harder than us so we really had nothing to complain about.

As we climbed out of the gorge and onto the plateau of the mountain any sign of the track to the summit disappeared as we were walking only on rock. I turned the GPS on; found enough satellites to give us an accuracy of 9 meters and the compass arrow pointed to our left with an estimate of the distance to go. We continued following the directions and arrived at the summit. The calculations I had taken at home were out by 21 meters and that was not taking into account the 9 meters variation on the GPS. I was very impressed with my newly learned GPS skills.

I know I have told you about my dislike of cairns being built in National Parks and I don’t like the one up here but I am prepared to accept it as it is very old and the only one here. Colin and I even posed next to it so you may call me a hypocrite if you wish. It was too cold and windy to have lunch at the summit so we joined a group of walkers from the Brisbane Bushwalkers Club who were sheltering from the wind just below the cairn.

After lunch we descended from the summit and found our way through very rough terrain to the other peak, it was windy and cold here also so we did not stay long. During our descent to the track leading down into the gorge, Colin lost his footing on a step rocky slope. As he tumbled forward he also knocked me down, somehow we managed to stop our fall before we suffered serious injury. I expected Colin to have skin off him everywhere but as far as skin loss, it was me who came off worse where Colin’s boot had hit me in his initial fall. He did finish up with a very sore rib cage and minus a bit of skin. A very kind nurse from PA Hospital in Brisbane came upon us and dressed my wounds. Whoever you are, thank you.

The trip down the gorge was a very careful descent as we did not want to tempt fate with another fall. Without further incidents we arrived back at the car and being sore and sorry for ourselves we abandoned our normal beer at the Rathdowney Hotel and opted for a quick trip home and a hot shower.