Attempt 2 at Hiking Mount Barney

This weekend it was my sincere intention to climb Mount Barney, the sixth highest mountain in Queensland at 1359m. On a previous trip I went with a Brisbane young hiker group, and our intention was to scale up through Barney gorge (Grade 5) to the saddle between the two peaks, camp in the saddle, attain the peak and tare the easy way down through peasants ridge (Grade 3). On that trip the creek was flooded from days of rains, and Barney gorge was a torrential waterfall. We ended scrambling up the Midget ridge (Grade 6) side of the gorge until an hour of nonstop rain dampened our spirits and slowed our progress, necessitating a retreat to the lower portals campground. The rain didn’t cease until after midnight, so that wasn’t the best trip.
This weekend I was keen for adventure because my travel schedule will soon leave me starved of it. I planned a fairly aggressive itinerary, driving from Brisbane starting at 7 AM (and waked me up at 5.30 am) with intentions to climb up Midget ridge to attain the west peak, then fall through the saddle to pick up some water and then up the East peak and out to Eagle ridge (Grade 6). My primary error at this point is a vast underestimation of the difficulty of the endeavor as well as a misunderstanding of timing.
It was a two hour drive to Mount Barney, but Regina, the Google navigational lady, is a terrible person who frequently deserves a keel haul. This was one of those occasions where she failed to correct a navigational error on my part, and instead she drove me 20 minutes into the country. She led me up a side of the mountain until abruptly declaring that I should take a U-turn. At this point I unleashed an expletive laced stream of consciousness filled with vitriol. I imagined that my utterances could melt her slimy silicone interior and give me some satisfaction in her discomfort, but only Oksana seemed to react to my diatribe. I think I should have started the conversation with “OK Google” so Regina would have been listening.
A 40 minute detour dampened my spirits, but it’s all part of the adventure. We hopped out of the car and got to hiking the 3.7 km in to the Lower Portals campground. The Portals themselves are stone gates rising 30-100m high on either side of Barney creek, forming a deep and sometimes swift channel through the gorge.
The Portals campground had been moved downstream, as the last cyclone had washed out the area leaving scattered debris and rocks where the previous campground had been. This required us to backtrack a km which ate into our time further. We quickly struck camp and repackaged into day bags, making sure we were prepped for night ops or an emergency nighttime bivvy . We struck up Barney Creek which was stunning in beauty.
Giant and fractured pophyrite boulders scattered the gin-clear waters. I couldn’t stand the thought of drinking city water any more, and I emptied my bottle to be replaced by the mountain water. We followed this stunning landscape upriver, searching for Barney Gorge. When I was last here the going was slow and wet as we fought vegetation on the fringes of the creek, as the high water made easy progress impossible. In today’s conditions, we rock-hopped through the river along the scattered boulders. This is one of my favorite things to do, and I was in a state of bliss. This was so enjoyable that somehow we missed Barney Gorge entirely, and I only noticed this on my Strava GPS tracker after we had rounded most of the way past Midget Ridge.
At this point it was 2PM, with an anticipated sunset at 6, so I mentioned that we should re vector our plans to tackle Long Leaning ridge instead (Class 7!). Barney Gorge is directly between Midget and Long Leaning ridges. I had in mind a bail out plan of a strategic retreat down Short Leaning ridge which has an unnamed gorge in between. As we backtracked we saw why we had missed Barney gorge. The torrential waterfall of my memory was barely a drip. We started our attack on Long Leaning ridge with enthusiasm, as we had spent all this time just getting to the point where we could attack the mountain.
None of these ridges are frequented by hikers, and as such there was not an established route. This has the taste of high adventure as we scrambled up and over boulders and massifs. Oksana saw that we had a peak ahead of us and grew hopeful, but I knew it was just one of many knobs atop the ridge. Traversing this rugged terrain requires advanced route finding skills and strong gluteus. Oksana kept asking me which way we were meant to go and my only reply was UP. Once we attained the first knob on the ridge, she looked at the next knob as the pinnacle. I doubted this, as any self respecting mountain hides its peak behind multiple enticing false peaks to disorient and confuse would-be mountaineers. We descended the saddle and worked our way up the next knob on the ridge. The going was slow as we had to negotiate every corner carefully. We were mostly climbing up, but every few minutes we would be faced with a sheer cliff with a drop of 30 m or more. Sometimes we were on the bottom of said cliff, and sometimes on the top. It was generally safe to assume that wherever you could see vegetation it was possible to scramble up, whereas bare rocks were scraped bare for a reason.
The peak of this second ridge knob afforded us a view of the short leaning ridge a km ahead of us, and Barney’s East peak 3 km ahead. I took a moment to calculate our progress and evaluated that we would make the peak several hours after dark, and we’d complete the hike by the following morning. Given how treacherous the route finding was in broad daylight (Class 7 is pretty rough), I was generally unwilling to do much movement after dark because a misstep could easily send you off into the abyss.
This was a hard decision, but one that I have made over and over again when climbing mountains. It’s a decision that allows me to keep writing and exploring, and it’s also why I don’t have that story about the one time I got picked up my a helicopter for a broken leg. It was the decision to turn back.
Oksana didn’t like this, as she was enamored of the idea of reaching the summit. I walked her through the logistics that would have us back at our campsite in darkness already. I don’t mind walking along the river in darkness, but bush bashing and route finding on this ridge in the darkness is not safe or fun.
From our high vantage I noticed that the saddle between the knob we currently stood upon and the next upward seemed to trace a line of green amidst grey slab. It seemed a reasonable vector to the river. I explained my reasoning to Oksana and asked for her to follow. She trusted me, much to her chagrin. I’m not so happy with this choice either, although it was technically safe. It would have been easier to scramble back the way we came, but instead we plunged into a gorge choked with thick brush.
The good news, is that when you are in a gorge filled with brush is that you can climb down quite vertically using the vegetation as support. The rock itself was also quite fractured by the flow of water and debris and was an excellent down climb. Several sections were low level rock climbs, Aussie 6-8 rating, which was safe enough to solo. There were large slab sections which were tempting to take as there was no vegetation, but a footing mistake would lead to a tumble 30m or more to the next ledge, likely with broken bones and death. I chose the most prudent routes which were rather vertical and choked with vegetation.
As we were nearing the bottom the slab did not ease up, and instead it became more steep. This began to worry me as we became dumped into a chimney chute which was scraped clean of vegetation, and it was a pure rock climb down. What mostly worried me is that these near vertical segments would become vertical then overhung, and we didn’t have protective gear.
I could see a small plateau, but we came to a 5 m waterfall section that was mercifully covered by a tree that grew down into the crack. We probably could have climbed the rock directly, but it worked well enough to straddle the branches of the tree and shimmy down. I felt better with this plateau, as it let us out of the chimney and gave us at least 3 routes down. I selected one based on its appearance, and we down climbed what amounted to a vertical ladder of rock. It was an excellent climb down for about 30m, and I just hoped the end of this sluice didn’t eject the water to a vertical fall. We named this place and waterfall "Mike's and Oksana's waterfalls", because I am pretty sure nobody has followed this way before and are survived.
As it turned out, the ladder sluice led to a large Boulder under which was a 10 m vertical drop. Typical mountains, but we found an alternative way to scramble around and see the neat cave formed by the waterfall. This led to a larger ladder chimney which led us to the broad plateau. Upon reaching the fall’s top it was evident there was a steep drop beyond it, but our spidery skills allowed us to sidestep the main falls and climb around a ridge to the larger plateau around. We could see the creek at this point, a mere 30 m below, but in typical mountain fashion we had to negotiate two more vertical sections before we came out upon the relative safety of the creek only 2 km downstream of where we had started.
At this point we only had 40 minutes of daylight remaining, but we were hot and dirty, with scratches all over our arms and legs and brush in our hair. Oksana sported a very nice new bruise on her ass while my back had decided a pinched nerve was apropos. My trusty ultralight daypack may have seen its last adventure. At times like these the most important thing to do is get naked.
Conveniently neither of us have any compunction about nudity, us both being close to the Grecian ideals of perfection of the human form. I expect any passer-by to stare in awe at our muddied magnificence as we cleaned off to shining white in the very cold water. We both waded in to waist level, then let our screams out underwater and we plunged to full depth in the frigid waters. After a scrub of the mud and dirt we took the opportunity to gather selfies for remembrance.
The bath invigorated and awoke us, and we practically ran atop the river stones. We reached the campsite just as the world turned pitch black. We took a quick after-bath at the river then cooked dinner to the sounds of running water. After I cleaned out the JetBoil I attracted the typical Aussie scavengers, a 1 m long spotted eel, a 40 cm catfish, yabbies(Aussie crawfish) and 2-3 cm long glass shrimp. Viewing the aquatic wildlife wouldn’t have been complete without the realization that were were sitting among several 10 cm huntsmen spiders.
After a good sleep in perfect weather, we woke, hiked out and drove to Mount French and the Frog Buttress rock climbing area. I had just received my trad (traditional) climbing gear in the mail and I was eager to try it out. These pieces of aluminum get shoved into cracks and hold on to protect me in case of a fall, and it was my first time climbing this style. This type of climbing promises to open up worlds of adventure to me, as I will no longer rely on established routes and I can delve further off track with more safety.
I climbed a route designated as a 12, Parson’s Pride, and I did a pretty good job in protection placement and energy management. It did this route rather slowly, however. Oksana climbed it on top rope like a champ, and afterwards I literally ran up the rock to clean it. We had intentions to get back early enough for entertainment, so we quit here and drove back to Brizzie. Showers and Indian dinner was followed by live entertainment and a few beers, and I had to pack for a 6AM flight to Adelaide. All said, good adventure, and next time we’ll plan more time to tackle Mount Barney.