Grand Canyon best hiked anti-clockwise
Arguably, the Blue Mountains’ most iconic and accessible day hike through nature is the ‘Grand Canyon Walking Track’.
Situated within the Blue Mountains National Park 5km east of the village of Blackheath (don’t walk it), this classic and recently restored tourist track provides for a 7km circuit into a mostly shady narrow slot canyon featuring rainforest, waterfalls and rock pools as it follows Greaves Creek downstream before tumbling into the magnificent Grose Valley.
For our researched tour offering, we prefer a first light start, provide for an interpretative 5 hour hike duration and include a catered breakfast stop. We park and start from Evans Lookout Car Park when it is cooler, we are the only ones, and the bird chorus is on. Critically, this provides a last minute basic (‘long-drop’) toilet stop for our guests.
We flat hike first back to Neates Glen for 1.4km trackside upon the ridge top, while the sun is still low and the ambient temperate relatively cooler than in the afternoon. Then we safety brief before leading a quiet descent hike into the canyon, zig-zaging the creek underneath the morning birdsong chorus.
This anticlockwise direction takes the hiker on a gradual and easy downhill pathway stroll, entering into a woodland gully and then logically following the watercourse of the disappearing creek. This route lends to focusing on interpretation of the natural landscape – the changing micro-climate vegetation and geomorphology as the rising sandstone cliff walls lower the temperature and sunlight. This section comprises the most of the track and the best scenery.
But if hiked in reverse uphill on this section, the focus of the hiker is drawn head down, feet-focused on uneven steps and the mind to a long climb of the drudgery of thousands of steps.
So we do it anti-clockwise. There’s just better ‘eye candy’ and it’s more ergonomically comfortable.
Our Tour Director in sardonic copy-cat pose..heading anti-clockwise down the Grand Canyon.
The descent into the canyon necessitates the eventual ascent back out. The overall vertical relief is 40m more than Sydney’s 309m high Centrepoint Tower both down and up – a poignant reference we use to those arriving in the Blue Mountains from Sydney.
Grand Canyon Walking Track has ancient origins and was formalised for tourist access in 1907. It is a classic heritage track. A hundred years hence the track has been restored and upgraded with carved sandstone over a ten year period, completed in 2017 at a cost of nearly $5 million.
There are numerous comfortable spots en route to allow for pause for breath and the beauty, to photograph, for snack and meal breaks, plus to delve into a few little-known pristine deviations such as orange yabbie and eastern dragon spotting. We do this for the natural majesty of the place, the aesthetic streams of sunlight, the calming bubbling waters and there are two mind blowing vistas we take a wonder at.
We certainly don’t press the speed fiend verbal diarrhoea race pace of clubbers. Treadmills are for such fitness pursuits.
At the lowest point of our track a wee footbridge crosses over the Greaves Creek, thereafter begins the staircase ascent out of the canyon.
The sandstone steps have been exquisitely hand-masoned and the staircases laid to Australian Standards for walking tracks. Since the ascent equates to taking the fire escape up Sydney Centrepoint Tower, multiple rests are in order, but the route is mostly shaded being on an eastern lee slope.
Arrival back towards Evans Lookout greets the hiker to an magnificent view of the Grose Valley. The car park provides good shade, toilets, plus our tour vehicle is parked there well-equipped – cold water, refreshments, air-conditioning, mod-cons.
Such is our way of doing the Grand Canyon – due regard for the comfort, welfare and interpretative experience of our guests. And every trip is a treat and is well received.
But don’t just take our advice:
https://mytraveljam.com/blue-mountains-hike/
http://thelongwaysbetter.blogspot.com/2015/07/grand-canyon-walk-blue-mountains.html
COVID CRACKDOWN
However, some desktop senior bureaucrat in the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, aka ‘Parks Service‘, has decided in its wisdom to impose a mandatory one-way clockwise circuit from Evans Lookout. It’s using the COVID excuse.
“Grand Canyon walking track has been made one way until Saturday 30 January 2021. Applies from Thu 7 Jan 2021 to Sat 30 Jan 2021. Please enter the loop track at Evans lookout and exit at Neates Glen. This change is due to record visitation levels and to help maintain social distancing.”
This would mean that since most visitors arrive from Sydney at around midday. The peak visitation to the Grand Canyon tends to be between 11am and 3pm. Following the Parks Service clockwise advice, visitors’ return walk back to their car from Neates Glen to Evans lookout would be in the direct hot sun for 1.4km.
Both car parks are isolated from Blackheath village, a walking distance from Neates Glen to the retail precinct is about 4.5 km, mostly in direct sun. The Neates Glen car park is about half the capacity of that at Evans Lookout and provides no shade, nor drinking water nor toilet facilities. There is a water tap there but the handle is missing. Neates Glen car park also has a reputation for car break-ins and signs there warn of such.
Given that this the hiking track between Evans Lookout and Neates Glen is 1km above sea level, the ultra-violet radiation is typically extreme (yet indetectably insidious) in the summer months. The consequence of this authoritarian ruling is to impose a less safe heightened risk of heat stroke and cancerous sunburn to hikers of the canyon. We certainly won’t be following such arbitrary and misguided advice.
‘Parks Service’ needs to really get out more.