Hey look, a ruined castle!

Our first preparation hike as a full team (the ones coming from Australia at least) happened on a warm and sunny Saturday. We hiked from Scenic World in Katoomba, down the Golden Stairs to the Ruined Castle, had lunch and then back again.

The Castle became far less castle like on closer inspection and there was nothing remotely golden about those stairs but we'll get to that later.

We all met up at 9am at Scenic World, some brighter and more bushy eyed than others depending on how much sleep we had the night before.

It was here that we met up with Graydon Colville, the International Director of GRN and Bruce and Nellie, two other team members going on the trip.

There were gorgeous views of the valley along the dirt roads on our way to the beginning of the trek, however, we were constantly distracted by the VERY loud cicadas. They grow them big out here! Bruce gave us a bit of a lesson about how they made noise by drumming on their hollow abdomen.

That's a mighty big abdomen

Here's where we started off.

Doesn't look that bad...

Creation and stuff

Going down the Golden Stairs wasn't too difficult but coming back up was a completely different story.

Back up that!?!

Oh...

We saw glimpses of where we needed to be, a pile of rocks named Ruined Castle. Aptly named? You decide.

That pile of rocks is where we're going?
How exactly are we getting there?

Once we got down the bottom of the stairs it was time for the easy part of the walk over flat terrain for 3.4km.

We're not lost, what a bonus

Ahh...the serenity

After a bit of a climb we made it to the top of the Ruined Castle! The view was incredible and we wanted to climb up and be kings and queens of the castle.
It was well worth the heart pounding fear that we went through to get there.

If you're a castle, then what am I?

Here's what we could see from the top.

Mt Solitary. 'Coz' I'm all alone, there's noone here beside me'

See that white cable line in the top left? Yeh, that was where we had to get back to.

We had lunch at the Ruined Castle and had a bit of a discussion about what will be in store for us in Nepal. GRN Nepal are in the process of planning the trip but there have been none yet that have gone according to plan! We also talked about our own cultural bias.

After lunch we walked back along the trail.

Caption and stuff

This is what awaited us on the way back. This was between us and the end. 800m of hell. Apparently not comparable to the Nepali climbs though. Not a fact that we wanted to hear.

It just kept going...

When we made it to the top it was such a sweet success.

This was a fairly easy hike compared to what we will be doing in Nepal. There will be some days of continuous trekking with our full packs on and other days where we'll just be hiking for an hour or so to different places. Despite all our best preparation, Nepal will still be a place that will challenge us mentally, physically and spiritually. Please continue to pray for us as we tackle all that needs to be done before we leave.