DAY 4: MT HASSELL
I follow a Facebook group of the Wildflower Society of Western Australia and I have been seeing a lot of posts of gorgeous photos from the Stirling Range. As a newcomer here, I had never heard of the place. I Googled it and learned that it’s in the southwest of Western Australia which is one of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotpots.
The Stirling Range National park is also one of a select group of places deemed to have outstanding heritage significance and is included on the Australian National Heritage List. And the national park is home to 1500 flowering plant species … more than all of the British Isles. A bushfire ripped through the park last year and devastated 40,000 hectares but the recovery seemed to be doing well, thanks no doubt to a very wet winter this year.
From Albany, Padma and I drove north to the Stirling Range. Rain was in the forecast and near freezing temps, so we ditched the tent and the leaking air mattress and found a warm and cozy cabin at a private campground.
We set a goal to climb to SW Western Australia’s highest peak on the day after arrival (stay tuned for that story) so we thought we’d do a bit of a warmup by climbing Mt Hassell. I thought I was getting to know the Western Australia flora but I was just gobsmacked with the diversity of the plants. Whereas the wildflower season was waning further north, it was near its peak in the south. The hike was up and up and up and the trail was rough. We arrived at a saddle with a magnificent view and could see the summit of Mt Hassell but it was a 150 metre elevation gain. ‘Nah…’ Padma and I said. We didn’t come to conquer peaks or prove anything to ourselves. We were satisfied with the view we achieved and even more content with the amazing display Mother Nature had put on for us. And we figured we’d better save our knees for the next day’s conquest…
DAY 5: KOIKYENNURUFF
Padma and I stood at the base of Bluff Knoll and could see why the Noongar people called the Stirling Range ‘Koikyennuruff’, which means ‘misty mountains’. The peak was shrouded in clouds when we arrived at the trailhead and at the time it seemed that after a short climb we’d be walking in the mist. Bluff Knoll is the highest mountain in the southern part of Western Australia and the hike to its summit at 1097 metres is considered one of Australia’s finest day hikes.
We had read that conditions change quickly on the mountain – for better or worse – so we packed our rain jackets and started to climb. The trail sign said we could do the round trip in 3-4 hours. It would have been easy just to declare the weather was lousy and spare our 60+-year-old knees the toil of such a climb, but we both kind of wanted to be able to proclaim we had climbed the mountain – view or no view.
After an hour or so of a very deliberate slow place (I conveniently used photo stops as resting stops) we met a man descending from the summit. ‘It’s all socked in,’ he said. But we kept climbing, hoping the conditions would change. More people descended and said there was no view at the top but they assured us we’d still get views hiking up. Finally, a man who had passed us earlier in the morning and was now descending said, the heavens opened up for a moment and he got a view … but then it clouded up again.
We kept climbing at an extraordinarily slow pace hoping the clouds would lift. And sure enough they did. Sometimes being the slow poke pays off in the end. We arrived at the summit just after the last clouds faded away and we were afforded a spectacular 360° view extending to the Southern Ocean.
The ’3-4 hour’ hike turned out more like five and a half hours for us but we completed it. Padma and I climbed the highest mountain in SW WA. Whoopeee!
