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After returning from Peru about a month ago I was itching to head outdoors again. So I decided to climb Mt Barney which is located slightly over 100km from Brisbane. And at 1351m it is one of the highest mounains in the South-East of Queensland.

Day 1 - A rush to the top

After doing some last minute packing I left the house and drove to the base of Mt Barney arriving at Yellow Pinch car park. I set off up the mountain at 11:40am. The first part of the trail was fairly easy going along a mostly flat 4-wheel drive track. After around 30 minutes I arrived at the turnoff to the South-East ridge trail. I was beginning to think that I missed the turn off, until I passed a tree which has SE engraved into it, this trail is also quite well worn. At first this trail was also quite flat apart from the initial hill, but as time passed it would get steeper.

Eventually the trail would turn into rocky outcrops. At one such outcrop I spotted a large brown tail hoping away between the boulders. As the wallaby (I presume that’s what it was) hopped away it made thud sounds as it bounced off the ground.

The majority of this trail is quite well worn and so easy to follow. There are a couple of small cliffs at which the navigation was a lot harder. At one spot the trail turned into a t-intersection at the cliff and I wasn’t sure which way was the best to follow. I chose the wrong way and had to climb back down as the point I reach seemed too hard to climb with the large backpack which made balancing a lot harder. I lost 40 minutes doing this, but once down to the track I found a path up the rock face a lot easier slightly further to the right along the cliff.

It was now a rush to reach the summit before the sun would go down. At this stage the sky cleared and there where fantastic views all around, unfortunately there was no time to take too many photos. I climbed a fairly high and steep hill which looked like the last one to be climbed. There is supposed to be a 300m drop at some point while climbing this hill, but I missed this as I was just concentrating on getting to the top. Despite its steepness this hill is fairly easy to climb as there are lots of spots for placing hands and feet. Once reaching the top of this hill I saw the sun dipping below the horizon near the West Peak, but was also meet by another small hill still to be climbed.

Once on the summit it was already dark and the wind picked up with thick clouds going past me. I decided to set-up camp up on the summit instead of going down to the camp site which is located in a saddle between the two peaks which make up Mt Barney. I don’t think camping on the summit is permitted anymore but I didn’t have much of a choice as it looked like there might be a storm and it was dark. For dinner I had some noodles, and I was soon relaxing inside the tent. It was very windy for the next few hours.

At around 1 am the wind just seemed to stop, and as I couldn’t sleep I decided to go outside and have a look. Most of the clouds had cleared and the moon illuminated view was fantastic. The Southern Cross was rising just above Mt Lindsey. After taking some photos I returned to the tent, only to get up a couple of hours later to view the sunrise.

The East Summit on which I stood was surrounded by clouds, and the West Summit would appear above the clouds from time to time. Not far from the West Summit the moon was heading towards the horizon. In the opposite direction the sky started to turn to a colourful purple colour before the sun would appear above the clouds.

Day 2 - Stroll down from the mountain

After watching the sunrise the clouds started picking up again. Despite there being no rain where I was, the clouds deposited lots of water drops on all the stuff outside. I was hoping to wait for an hour so that the sun would dry the tent, but this did not happen. So I packed up and started heading down at around 7:30am.

I imagined the track from the Eastern summit to the saddle to be quite easy and well worn. It turned out not to be so, there seemed to be a maze of lots of tracks and these where all interrupted by rocky outcrops at the bottom of which it was hard to find the track again. The vegetation here is also quite thick and my pants became soaked in water deposited on the plants by all the clouds.

The saddle itself is covered by rainforest and a creek crosses it. Near the creek there was a camp site with four guys camping. They showed me the way to the Rum jungle camp site, and they looked quite baffled as to how I got to the summit without passing them earlier.

The rest of the way down to the car park was quite easy and I followed the South or Peasants ridge down. The sky cleared and it became a quite hot day, I arrived back at the car at around 12:30pm. Shoulders and legs sore from the backpack and all the walking!

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