After the heat of Waa Gorge and Mount Kaputar we decide our best plan would be to get up super early and get the bulk of the Grand High top walk done before the heat of the day.

But first we have to get there. There was another feature just out of Coonabarabran we wanted to check out.

We pull into Hickey Falls, never seen them this dry before. Says a local lady we bump into.

The side trip to Hickey Falls meant we’d enter the Warrumbungles from the eastern side and the drive in is spectacular.

View after view.

We pull into the visitor centre to book into our camp we are thinking they are going to say we are nuts but when we mentioned we we planning the Grand Hightop Walk in the morning they just smiled and said, Oh lovely. You’d be best to start early in this heat.

Oh yeah we are going to start about 5 and try and get up to the breadknife for sunrise.

Oh that would be awesome…

Ok so we aren’t nuts. Or not as nut as when thought.

We pull into camp. We had picked our site based around the morning view

It took about an hour, though for the shade to disappear and we begged a change of site to find afternoon shade.

The afternoon is spent having a short section of song echo over and over and over and over.

It was a bit weird, at first I thought the grounds keep really likes his teeny bop but I go for a walk and there’s a K-pop or TikTok or whatever the kiddies call themselves these day <Old man shakes fist at Cloud> perfecting their dance moves to the song.

We are pretty much the only ones in the entire camp ground so good on them say I.

Still, I do my best to get into their background and ape their moves. It’s how I roll.

Anyhoo

We were up at sparrows fart and hit the trail at about 4.45am

It’s a lovely morning for a walk.

Are you thinking what I am thinking?

yes, I just made a Hey Hey its Saturday reference…

I apologise.

We spend a bit of time here and a bit further up just watching the changing light and taking a gazillion photos

We scramble up to the tops, the last 100m or so of trail is under construction so it’s still a bit of a scramble.

Topping out the wind is intense.

We take the short cut back down past Balors hut and get back to camp just after 9.

Another hot day poking around town and that brings a close to our epic first road trip in the Alucab