Wollangambe crater via Bell Perimeter trail

While going through Blue Mountains area walking list, I stumbled upon the "Wollangambe crater via Bell Perimeter trail" walk. This is very interesting as it stated to be an overnight walk while being only 18km, so I decided to do this walk in one day! Lisa, my friend, also joined me for this trip.

We departed early, taking the 6:20 am train from central. Bell station is rather unique, as you have to tell the conductor to be able to stop at the station. We started to walk to Sandham road which led to the Bell Perimeter trail. The first part was quite easy, we just followed a fire trail up to a creek, from here, the track was very overgrown and was hardly visible. Nevertheless, we kept going, using our topo map which we had downloaded in our phone. 

After ascending up the ridge line, we finally found the famous 994 pagoda. It also has another name - the "Centre of the universe". 

This is another Pagoda that I found pretty cool

Standing on the pagoda, the majestic view of the Wollangambe wilderness could be seen. Although bush fire damage were there, I was glad to see that regeneration has kicked off quite strongly in the area. We had our little break, after climbing up the pagoda and took some nice pictures. 

We talked and had some snacks before descending down to Wollangambe river. Although we got off track a few times and may have taken the long way, we arrived at the crossing log like in the track notes. I started to get very excited as we are getting closer to the crater. The river had a lot of water, as expected since it was raining cats and dogs a few days ago.

 

The Wollangambe crater consisted of a large swamp, we spotted a few very nice campsites there, and also a cave camping site. The greenery of the crater were amazing, there seemed to be no evidence of bush fire ravaging this place at all, as greens covered the entire area. We climbed up a bit to have a wider view of the place. 

The returning trip was faster, as we knew the landmarks that we should be looking for. I was surprised by how quick we finished the trip - 4pm. Even though track notes said this is supposed to be an overnight walk, I believed this can be done as a solid day walk. Nonetheless, I would definitely go back for an overnight trip, since the campsites looked really nice.