We left Yardup Shearing Shed at about 11am, and drove straight to the base of Bluff Knoll. Bluff Knoll is the third highest Peak in Western Australia at 1099m tall. It is one of the few places in WA that gets snow, and in fact the day before and day after, the peak experienced snowfall. Having lived in Switzerland for the first 10 years of my life, this wasn’t too spectacular, but WA residents travel for hours just to experience.


The placement of the Stirling Ranges does feel a bit bizarre at first as the mountain ranges seem to pop up out of nowhere, especially as the whole of the state seems to be comparatively flat. Apparently the ranges were formed when Australia broke away from the Antarctic. Sounds dramatic.


The whole park is managed by the Parks & Wildlife Department, who do a bloody good job of maintaining all the parks I’ve been to so far. Usually there is a fee for entry per car and the Stirling Ranges is no exception. The exception is that they have a credit card machine this time. About bloody time I say. One step closer to my cash-less society utopia.

Driving to the base of Bluff Knoll was easy and the parking plentiful, with tarmac bays and even toilets blocks.

Now, my biggest dilemma was figuring out what to bring and what to wear. I managed to pack and unpack my small camelbak bag and large photography hiking bag twice before setting off. In the end I wore my thermal top, middle layer and winter coat along with my big photo hiking bag and tripod. Rebecca was fond of the big bag so that I could carry all the excess layers, mine and hers of course.


Setting off, the path starts as concrete and quickly changed to a gravel path, interspersed with rock, but it was a pretty well maintained path all the way to the top, the frequency of steps increasing as we climbed higher. We even passed Parks Staff carrying what looked like sleepers to create new steps further up.


So, this was also my first hike with my new activity tracker watch the Garmin Fenix 5x. It’s a beast. Battery that lasts for weeks, will connect to all the sensors on my bicycle with a heart rate sensor, barometer, altimeter, gps, glonass etc. Everything to keep me busy staring at stats after activities. One of the features on the watch is Ultra-Trac. It’s function is to extend battery life by sampling GPS at a reduced rate and instead using the gyroscope to fill in the gaps. In retrospect it is probably best for Marathons. Unfortunately I had it activated for my Bluff Knoll hike and the result was very zig-zaggy on the map.


Within the first hour of walking I quickly realised that I had very much overdressed for the 12 degrees at the base of this mountain. I was burning up, my heart was racing and (although usually quite normal) Rebecca was racing ahead, stopping often to wait for me.


The end result was us swapping bags because I had already burned up and she had energy to spare…

So smug....carrying my bag for me. :o

As we approached the hour mark at the southern tip, the weather had turned, or we had walked high enough to be among the clouds. We started to feel the strong winds, the temperature drop and even some moisture, though not yet rain. Photos were more rare and the big coat, neck warmer and beenie hat came out of the bag. It is at this stage that I had no regrets regarding the amount of clothing I’d brought along. In fact I was the smug one now!

Reaching the top was great. Even though it was freezing cold and Rebecca kept scaring the crap out of me by insisting on posing for cliff edge photos, it was pretty amazing, and every now and then the clouds would clear and afford us a few moments of great views.

Rebecca lost the feelings in her fingers so we made sure she wore two pairs of gloves and we promptly walked back down the hill. The rain started and suddenly I was feeling very smug in my warm layers as I watched folks struggling up the hill in just t-shirt and shorts. Rebecca’s fingers warmed up just fine.


Then we had the great idea after spending just over 3 hours on Bluff Knoll, to go and do another hike. We headed down the road (in the car of course) and parked up at the base of Mt Trio.


Mt Trio was a completely different animal to Bluff Knoll. She was steeper, narrower, taller. That was just the paths, as suggested by the name, there were also three peaks. We started the hike close to 4pm, so we were a little bit conscious of the coming sunset.

An hour into the walk, the heavens opened up and poured on us. A quick groufie and we headed back down the hill.

Of course half way down the hill, which wasn’t easy to climb down, the clouds opened up and made the walk down much more pleasant!

We climbed off Mount Trio, jumped in the car, appreciated the setting sun (even though the vegetation didn’t give us a fantastic view), and went straight to the Bluff Knoll Cafe. The food was alright, but the character made the place for us.