The Hills Are Alive

This is the "before" shot. I refuse to show you the after.

When I was younger, my family would often visit Quebec (maternal family lives there). Every time that we did, my siblings and I would be taken for a "fun, relaxing" day of climbing up Cap-Trinite - a.k.a. climbing up stairs to 411 m elevation (thanks Wikipedia), down another 100 m on the other side, and then back up and over to get to the bottom. 

This activity went on until the day that I threw up a double chocolate muffin before we'd even made it 200 m up. On the plus side - I am no longer tempted to eat double chocolate muffins, and I didn't have to climb the stairs that day.

Big people rocks.

But it appears I did not learn my lesson, because today I engaged in the same activity - only voluntarily, and down a much less established trail. (If you can call it a trail. I think trail means something else in Australian English. Possibly "established route for certain death".) 

Stairs of doom.

I was very keen to see Govett's Leap, which was recommended by a British couple that I'd met on Fraser Island. They said the view was lovely, and you could walk to the bottom of a waterfall and walk under the waterfall, which was lovely except for the leeches. (Leeches don't worry me as much, because another childhood activity was swampwalking. Yep.) So we set off on the "trail" to the base of Bridal Veil Falls - "snakes are active" sign be-damned. And it was nice for the first 20 mins - before we started hitting see-through metal staircases down sheer cliff-sides, mud-washed stairs with nary a railing to protect us from Scenic Railway-type drops, and 'rock' staircases that were not made for short person legs. 

More stairs of doom.

Leech-free beauty.

And all for 5 minutes (sadly leech free) at the bottom of Bridal Veil Falls - but what a cool 5 minutes it was. Seeing the misty spray virtually float down from the cliff above was, in a word, awesome. And it was even worth the pain of getting all the way back up again.

At least that's what I keep telling myself. A day later, it is strangely enough my arms and shoulders that are in the most pain - which is a bit worrisome when one thinks about it, because it means I was truly gripping those railings for my life. Or maybe it was just for show - those snakes needed someone to entertain them!