Stirling Ranges Serious Moonlight Tour!

(Full slide show)
Yes we made it! Maybe we did not make the full Ridge Walk, but we are now glad we did not as we had no petrol in the 2 cars that were taking us home, so if had been 5 minutes later getting off the mountains and into Amelup for fuel we would have had to spend a night in the car park waiting for them to open.

We headed off from Bluff car park just after midnight on Friday night and arrived at our campsite at about 3am under head torch light. The clouds came in almost as soon as we left the carpark so it was not as bright as we had hoped for. The trek up wiped a few of us out…unfit!

We were keen to set up our tents in the saddle just behind the final assent to the summit. A cool night but no wind.

The view in the morning was nothing less than a miracle! All the clouds, with no wind pushing them around, had settled below us in all of the valleys all over the ranges leaving the peaks poking up all around us, Scotty summited with his camera before breakfast. I will get some of his shots and post them here as they are second to none!
We didn’t get off until after 9, did the usual snaps from the top, then headed off to find the exit from Bluff Knoll, but went too far off to the right and spent an hour looking for the gully down to
Moongoongoonerup and beyond.

Scotty named the spur we finally found “The Kneecap” as it looked like a knee…maybe this was just a sign of things to come as Scotty’s knee was to give him some grief later.

The camp we decided upon was on a high exposed small saddle just off the summit of Isongerup South. It had views heading down both sides of the ridge walk.
The wind started up about midnight, and it blew like only the Stirlings could blow, at one point the tent Casey and I were in lifted up and threw me over onto him! We got up early, packed everything up and headed over Isongerup peak and onto the other side of Iongerup north to cook up our breakfast.

We were all feeling the fact that we were a bit behind to complete the full ridge, I had ‘jelly legs’, Scotty had a bung knee, Casey…well he is a hero and never complains and Stu…well he is former SAS, does this kind of thing every day before breakfast and could walk 2 days dragging a broken leg and 2 snake bights before he would think about mentioning it! So what am I saying? Scotty (brother in law) and I are wimps! Plus we lost a bit of time finding the path off Bluff, as well as the fact that the wind was blowing so hard you could lean into it and not fall over! We couldn’t stay on the track!
We left the ridge at Arrow #1, down the long spur and onto a VERY long walk along the fire trail, but we kept a good pace of 7.4 km/h until we arrived back at the car!

It was a great trip.

Enjoy the snaps in this slide show it’s about 4 minutes long.