Page 101 - Our Favourite Walks by Brian Everingham

Pantoneys Crown

My favourite Blue Mountains walk.

Mark Goodson

From the first time I climbed Pantoneys Crown in 1981 I was smitten with this impressive flat topped
mesa which rises 400 metres from the floor of the Capertee Valley which is the world’s second largest
canyon. Last year I made my 19th visit to the top on a day walk taking many of my regular NPA friends
for what is for me, an almost yearly pilgrimage of sorts.
For the first dozen ascents I chose to start from the south, carrying 2 days of gear plus water, as the
objective was always in those days to camp on top in a superb camping hollow close to the southern
end of the Crown. The route started at Baal Bone Gap and followed the rough Crown creek fire trail
down its zig zag route into the dry valley of Crown creek itself until you reached the junction of an
unnamed dry creek coming in from the north where the fire trail was abandoned and a scrub bash
commenced. As off track walking goes it wasn’t too hard with only light scrub along the route plus the
added attraction of a beautiful stand of Callitris pines about halfway to the start of the ascent.

This ascent was always the hardest part of the walk, not surprisingly as it was often two steps up and
one back as you slowly ascended the slippery slope towards the southern end of the Crown where
upon at the base of the cliffs a well-earned rest was sorely needed. This was only half the fun as you
still had to negotiate through the cliff lines up to the summit. A good length of tape was needed as
there are 2 tricky rock scrambles but once on top it’s only a short walk of a 100 metres to a great
campsite surrounded by impressive pagodas. If you were lucky you could hope to find water in a tiny
watercourse in the centre of the Crown. This was the case on 11 of my 12 camping trips with the last
walk being the first time we had not found water on top. Due to this situation I decided from then on

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