Well all good plans we had to meet Garry and Cathy for a 7am kick off. Yep this is the climb! A little misunderstanding on my part, led us to be 20 minutes late and those bodies on the left, two of those are Garry and Cathy, don't ask me which two but two of them are. Ah yeah we'll be able to catch up with them no worries. WRONG! I knew I would struggle but just how much I didn't realise, after all I had been in training all week with all the walks, climbs we had done at the gorges and canyons, that's gotta make it easier, wrong again! 
Thank God we made it to the top of the of the chain! I thought I was going to die, it was blowing an absolute gale, I mean my lips were cracking up with each step, I was puffing and panting, I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest. I was coughing and spluttering, my nose was running, oh what a joyous experience this was, as I was pulling myself up this humungous mountain of rock. And my Darl where was he, skipping his way effortlessly ahead of me, the fit bugger! A lot of expletives were travelling through my mind at this time.
We didn't take photos on the way to the pinnacle as we were on a mission, I just wanted to get there, and here we are we made it!! We followed the dotted white line up and down the rock, it was easier going for the next 2 thirds of the trek. It was an awesome feat, a once in a life time event. I sure as hell will not be attempting again.
It's almost all down hill from the top and my Darl stops for a spread eagle in one of the wind tunnels. Quite a number of people of died doing this climb, you can see how easy it would be to chase you hat when it blows off, only trouble is you can't pull up when the sides of the rock disappear, others have had heart attacks and they even count the ones that have had heart attacks up to 3 days after doing the climb.
This shot taken at the top looking towards the edge where we have to descend to the bottom, seems an awful long way to go. The wind is howling. We dare not deviate from the white line.
I attempted this walk some 21 years ago on a contiki trip. I am not sure how I did it then but I made it up to this point (end of the chain) and decided it was all too hard and didn't continue. Little did I realise it was a hell of a lot easier once you get up this couple metres.
You kinda get a feel of just how steep this walk is here. I must admit it is something that you don't do every day and if you ever get the opportunity and fit enough to do, it's one of those things you should do. They say this walk will be closed in a couple of years, you have to wonder what that will do to the tourism industry out here. We made it to the bottom and my Darl announces that the rangers had closed the walk due to high wind velocity as we were approaching the half way mark up the ascent, good on him I say!
After we had a short food and drink break, we did the 11km circumference of the rock, taking in a couple of different angles along the way.
We reckon this part looks like a whale, another part looks like a kangaroo tail. The whole facade of the rock is open to your imagination.
Here we all are, the group we were supposed to climb with, Cathy and Garry and their friends and us celebrate with a champagne. Our neighbours back at camp missed doing the climb as it had just closed, but mentioned how hilarious it was to watch a bus load of Asian tourists arrive and got off running as fast as they could as they had seen the rangers about to close the climb. They all got on running past the rangers.
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