Standing atop one of Australia’s finest flat-topped mountains in the middle of the NSW Budawang Range while wearing formal evening attire and sipping cocktails chilled with ice is a memorable experience – but it’s no glamping luxury trip either.
The even more memorable hike to the summit necessarily precedes the evening party: an 800 metre ascent over a mere six kilometres, carrying packs that weigh upwards of 20 and 30 kilograms, and – somehow twice in 2014 – all of this during a heat wave.
This is the ‘Cocktails on the Castle’ event: a trip run by the Australian National University Mountaineering Club (ANUMC), and called by the Canberra Times “Australia’s most exclusive cocktail party.”
Back in 1993, the Youth Hostels Association of NSW celebrated its 50th anniversary by proposing a competition: to climb and photograph the summit of 50 famous mountains in the state. By way of participating in the competition, and inspired by summit dinner parties run by the Sydney Social Climbers in the late 1980s, the inaugural Castle climb was born.
The first ever Cocktails on the Castle as covered in Wild issue 50, 1993.
Now very much a tradition, the twentieth anniversary of the hike in 2013 was postponed due to bushfires and the ensuing park closure, so the anniversary was celebrated in 2014 with two trips up the ascent, unluckily both during particularly warm weather.
The late January hike was a grueling 36 degrees on the main day of walking, while the end of summer conditions had left no water at the creek in the saddle.
Similarly, the November ascent was undertaken in 33 degrees, and a 38 degree Sunday inspired a dawn camp departure.
As punishing as the hike sounds, between 10 and 20 people make the ascent every year, with the only injury being a fractured ankle in 1998, and some blood loss due to scrapes and the infamous leeches of Long Gully.
Read Jessica’s full account in issue 145 of Wild magazine, due to arrive before the new year.