#TripBlog: A walk up Mt Hollow without the death-defying jump.

To see the full album (click here)

It was the cave that sold me. The Grampians has many different mountains to climb, Mt Difficult, Mt Zero and Mt Stapylton are a few. But when the guy at the visitor information centre told me that Mt Hollow had a great cave that you had to crawl through a small gap in the rock to get to, I was sold.

The drive to Mt Hollow is really interesting. You find it by travelling along rich, red, dirt tracks, past bushland and a large olive plantation. After a picnic at Mt Zero we were ready for our big climb.

The climb up Mt Hollow takes about 1.5 hours (2.2km return) and is graded medium. We took off through vegetation onto the start of the rocky ascent. Now I swear the man at the visitor information centre told me to turn right when the arrows say to turn left to get to the cave. So I insisted we were on the right track. But before long the track faded and the vegetation grew thicker and rockier. Then it was guess work about where to go. But we could not turn back. We had to find the cave. After awhile, we began to hear voices, but could not see the source through the thick scrub. That’s when Andrew found a long, narrow crevice. Squeezing through the gap, it took him to an open cave on the other side of the mountain. He crawled through and had to climb down a steep, vertical mountain slope to get down. But that was nothing to what we found then.

We came across three mountain climbers practising on a steep vertical wall. One man, chalked up and with mat beneath, climbed the wall with his fingers, every muscle in his body straining and bulging out of his torn shorts (no kidding!). Under strain, he made the most violent noises that I thought about quietly turning around and disappearing. But then he reached the top and turned into a normal person again. After getting his breath back, he told us we had just witnessed something he had been working on for a long time: reaching the top of the wall with nothing but his hands to pull him up.

To see pictures on the map of where we've been (click here)

Still unconvinced we had found the fabled cave, we returned to the conventional route. Close to the top, we found a great little cave to cool off in, which offered great views. It was the cave in the picture the visitor information centre guide had pointed out, however there was no such squeeze required to reach it! You just walk straight in. He also told us you could continue over to the next mountain by jumping a metre gap, with nothing beneath but a drop to certain death. But when we reached the summit of the mountain, we were shocked to find the next mountain was about 30m away. There is the possibility, though, that the gap he spoke of was to the mountain on the other side. Either way, we were not doing it! 

The view from the top of Mt Hollow is stunning and well worth the climb. If you wanted a short but rewarding climb, we think this is the one to pick.