Ayers Rock in Central Australia

Back in June 2004, Mark and I made to the trip to Central Australia to climb Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock Located in Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Park which is an enormous park with many Aboriginal sacred sites, spectacular scenery and famous rock formations including Uluru, it is 280 miles from the closest main city of Alice Springs. We flew in directly to the Ayers Rock airport, and stayed at the Ayers Rock Resort Campground which was a really nice peaceful place.

Uluru is the second-largest monolith in the world (after Mount Augustus, also in Australia), more than 318 m (986 ft) high and 8 km (5 miles) around. It also extends 2.5 km (1.5 miles) into the ground. As you drive towards the rock, you can see an ant's trail of dots vertically straight up the side of the rock, and boy did it look steep! We followed the trail of many tourists, and also started the 1.6km climb to the top, noting a sign as we started that there had been a number of deaths of people climbing the rock. Apparently over 35 people have died over the years. Good thing to note if only to remind you of your possible impending death!

The rock face is actually relatively smooth, and it felt strange that one was actually climbed one actual solid rock as opposed to a mountain. At times, the climb was slow as we hit bottle necks in the very steep vertical areas, which included the need to hold onto chain rails attached to the rock face. There was one area so steep, I saw a man literally push his elderly father on the ass directly up the steep steps. Indeed, whilst we took our time in the warm weather and bright sun, we passed quite a few elderly tourists also making the climb. I saw a few very old Japanese women with their large brimmed sun hats. I was very impressed at their stamina!

After the steep vertical climb up, it is a hike across the rocks to the highest point. It took us over an hour to reach the top which was full of other tourists. We took photos of the fantastic scenery and had lunch before heading down. Back the bottom, we decided to hike around the circumference of Uluru, admiring its changing rock face formations, and seeing some beautiful rock pools at the bottom. The hike took us five hours!!

On this trip, we also woke up at dawn one morning to see Ayers Rock at sunrise. Uluru is famous for its changing rock face colours at sunrise and sun set. The sun hits the rock and different angles providing awesome sights!

We also took a sunset camel ride, and visited both the Kata Tjuta rock formations and completed the 3 hours "Valley of the Winds" hike, and the hike at Kings Canyon.

The four day trip was awesome....and we can now tick off "climbed one of the largest single rock formations"!