Mt Owen

Me, Kieran and Mieke

Day One

Owen River to Cliff ledge on Bulmer Stream

Had  late start walking upto the Bivvy rock at Bulmer lake. The Owen river looked like it had been extremely high the past few days, and was still high, but crossable. We had underestimated how much our heavy packs would slow us down and decided to set up camp for the night rather than risk doing the cliff ledge in the dark when we didn't know what it intailed. Thought we were in for a miserable night until Kieran found an amazing camp site on the ledge under a dry overhang.

Day Two

Made it up to Bulmer lake and set up our camp at the rock bivvy. The Lake was also quite high, so we had to find  way around it. Set off to find the main Bulmer entrance and have a bit of a half day explore, we had been given some fairly vague instructions on how to get there, and went up way too high, poking round in lots of holes. Very cool landscape though. Finally went back down and followed another set of cairns that took us to the cave.

The entrance was huge, we certainly knew we had found it, as per the instructions. The plan was to just go for a bit of an explore so that we would be faster the next day, so we set up the pitch and went down the Medusa passage and beyond, to the lunch room where we turned around.

Day Three

Completed the through trip from the main Bulmer entrance to Panorama. Cool through trip, navving our way was pretty straight forward. Popped out at Panorama half way up a cliff.

Day Four

Sun finally came out :). Did a trip from Panorama to Eye in the sky where we stopped and had lunch outside. Had a look for the Whales Mouth but we didn't go low enough. Then back in and upto the Lions Den, our old map didn't have much detail of the area on it, so we had some fun exploring the maze of passages. Turned around here and headed back out Panorama. Checked the weather forecast and found that some bad weather was coming in, so we decided to cut out trip a day short so that we could get across the river.

Day Five

Walked out from the lake with our slightly lighter packs. Met some people along the way, a family who had been looking for the caves and stayed in Whales Mouth when the couldn't find the track from Eye in the Sky to the Bivvy. Turned out the Mum was on the second expedition to survey Bulmer.