The Stirling Range Ridge Walk

Back in May, some friends and I shot away for a weekend to do the Stirling Range Ridge walk. It was election weekend, and I for one was glad to escape the political hoo-har.

What is the Ridge Walk?

The ridge in question is in the Stirling Range, which is around four and a half hours drive from Perth. Here’s some good information about the walk, and the Stirling Range National Park in general.

The ridge runs east-west with Ellen Peak as the eastern-most mountain, and Bluff Knoll the western-most. We walked east to west, starting at Ellen Peak and ending at Bluff Knoll, hugging the ridge line the whole way - sometimes on top of the ridge, and sometimes along the base of the various peaks.

The walk is around 19 kilometres of very challenging terrain - the toughest WA has to offer. There is no one trail, rather a series of adjoining trails. Often it is clear where you need to go, sometimes it isn’t! You need to have quite a high degree of fitness and strength in the bank to complete this walk. You also need hiking experience and navigational skills, or to go with someone who’s an experienced navigator (which is what I did!).

Don’t make the ridge walk your first foray into multi-day hiking! Start with something much, much easier first, to get a feel for how the whole business works. Check out my post here about hiking near Dwellingup to get some ideas.

The ridge in all its glory!

We left Perth at around 3 pm on Friday afternoon-heading for the Stirling Range Retreat, which is near Bluff Knoll. We grabbed a pub dinner in Gnowangerup at around 6 pm and arrived at our digs at 7:30 pm.

The Gnowangerup pub - I can vouch for the chicken parmie.

The Stirling Range Retreat is a nice little collection of single dwellings and it’s a perfect budget-friendly home base for exploring the Stirling Range. The vegetation is beautiful and other worldly but it’s quite exposed — so I think in summer it could be extremely hot. (Not that doing the Ridge Walk in summer is a good idea…).

The Stirling Range Retreat

We had arranged in advance for the manager of the Stirling Range Retreat to drop us near the base of Ellen Peak on Saturday morning and pick us up at 4pm on Sunday afternoon in the Bluff Knoll car park – giving us two full days to finish the trip. That all went swimmingly.

It’s recommended that you do the walk in over three days and getting it done in two days is pretty taxing and requires a large amount of base fitness.

Here’s a very broad outline of the route for the purpose of giving a general picture and not specific instructions:

Start at the car park near the corner of Gnowllen Road and Kuch Road. Google maps reference: https://goo.gl/maps/a3RrQhE88w2mFYpCA

A screenshot of the route on Strava.

Walk along the firebreak running east-west at the border of the national park. One side of the firebreak is bush, the other is farmland.

Cut in off the firebreak at the large star picket (route pictured) to join the path up Ellen Peak.

Ascend Ellen Peak.

Hug the ridge line, including crossing to the south side of the ridge (a.k.a. “the Darkside“) which is a muddy scramble underneath granite cliffs.

Stay in one of the caves near the base of first, second or third arrow (you’ll need to be prepared to camp in the open if required).

Continue on the ridge until you reach the base of Bluff Knoll.

Ascend Bluff Knoll (this is a steep, hard scramble).

Descend Bluff Knoll (this is a quad/knee smasher - be warned)

View from Ellen Peak.

Drop your pack down to your mates, then climb down.

On “The Dark Side”, which faces south (hence the darkness & sogginess)

I’ve seen worse views…

Answering the call of nature.

Here are some miscellaneous thoughts and reflections I have on my Ridge Walk experience in a few areas.

Gear

My Scarpa boots, which I have been ambivalent about to date given they’re quite heavy, really came into their own on this walk. The traction was amazing, and the ankle support was excellent. I feel like I actually used the ankle support (for both safety and leverage) for the first time. Don’t do this walk in low top trail shoes or boots - that’s my advice.

Over-engineered for the Bibbulmun, perfect for the Ridge Walk.

My new Nemo mattress was super comfy, and well worth the investment. Now I just need a properly comfortable camping pillow and I actually may sleep well on a trail one of these days…

Nemo Astro was a winner. Warm, comfy, quiet (not squeaking every time I rolled over).

Our group was pretty confident we could get a place in one of the caves, as we went during a quiet time of the year. So, we didn’t take tents. We did take some insulation to place between our mattresses and the ground in the cave - to stay warm. This worked a treat and the material was a thin piece of some form of insulation material which is probably used inside wall cavities. (You can tell from my poor knowledge that it wasn’t my equipment!!)

My major gear fail on this occasion was to wear only shorts and not have gaiters or long pants. This cost me, as I ripped up the skin on my shins and thighs from all the scratching on the low scrub, which can be quite prickly. Not pleasant.

A thing you must know is that you have to carry all of your own water. You can’t assume you can get water on the ridge. By the end of day 1, I had used 9 litres. Water is heavy and occupies space, so that needs to be remembered when planning for this trip.

Environment

The night in the cave was surprisingly warm. The temp dropped fairly rapidly after sunset but in the night everyone was fine - and the wind was blowing straight into the cave at a fair clip. I had a Black Wolf down sleeping bag rated to +4 degrees (comfort measure), and I was wearing thermal long pants, two pairs of warm socks, a thermal top, a Uniqlo down vest and a Uniqlo down jacket (well, down blend probably). I started the night with my rain shell on but took that off as I got hot. Now, bear in mind that I am a bit of a wuss-bag when it comes to the cold.

Logistics

The Stirling Range Retreat people were a big help with their shuttling of our party.

It was a pretty exhausting mission to finish late Sunday arvo then drive back to Perth that night. I didn’t get to bed until 12:45am Monday morning and I had to be up at 4:45am to take a 6:30am class. So, ideally, we’d have allowed more time (if it was available). No regrets though! Not one.

Training and preparation

I was well prepared physically. In particular, I noticed how I really benefitted from all of the slow descent split squats I have been doing, as well as doing slow squats with a heel wedge. The most demanding part of this walk was the constant lowering of your weight. Because I was so strong in that way of moving, I handled it really well and I felt nimble, capable and always safe.

This blog post has been a long time coming and I am glad I have my thoughts out and on “paper”!