Ayers Rock is a very famous Outback Australian landmark, commonly known by its Aboriginal name, Uluru. It isn't a mountain so much as it's a rock just sticking up out of the flat Outback bush (okay, it's really a band of underground strata that was uplifted and weathered into its present shape - the same rock strata that formed the Olga Mountains which are about 30 miles away). Ayers Rock can be seen for miles. The usual starting point is the city of Alice Springs. From there it's about a 4-hour drive to the Ayers Rock "town" nearby, which is pretty much some hotels, hostels and shops serving the tourists. I visited Ayers Rock the first time in July 1985 while on a tour of the country. I went back again in May 1987 while spending a year going to school in Canberra.

On the 1985 visit, our tour group parked at the base and a few of us started in on the hike. The transition from desert sandy ground to 'rock' is very distinct; at one point you literally step from the sand onto the rock, and start up. The slope is moderate and the rock has lots of friction. Leaning into the rock on the ascent, we had no trouble making the first bit up to some chains, which run for a few hundred yards (I mean meters, sorry) along a particularly steep section. These end at a notch. From here the route is blazed in white dots and runs up and down and in and out of numerous weathered ridges along the flattinsh top to the actual summit, marked by a stone podium and register. The hike took about an hour which suggests about a mile one-way. Other sources give a gain of 1,150 feet, converted from the dreaded meters (they don't have feet in Australia).

Coming down was easy until the bottom of the chain section, where there was nothing but bare rock for about 200 feet. Lots of people simply leaned back and walked down, but I got spooked enough to use the five points of contact technique to inch my way down. A slip or tumble on this section would be fatal since there is nothing to break your fall except for rocks at the bottom. Fatalities are not uncommon; the ranger showed us a discreet area of the rock where some plaques had been set up to mention those who had fallen. A little later that afternoon I and a couple other fellow touristos paid a few dollars to ride in a Cessna aircraft to get some cool aerial shots, which you see here.

Two years later I was back in the land of Oz, attending school at the Australian National University in Canberra. During one of our semester breaks, I purchased a plane ticket to Alice Springs, joined with one of my fellow ANU buddies Amos (another American). We took the bus from there to Ayers Rock and hiked it, my second ascent and Amos' first. Exactly the same route as I did in 1985. This was all sandwiched between gigantic amounts of beer drinking. The whole experience was surreal: insane hostel-owners in Alice who would throw people out for the littlest offense, Abos who drank with us, and a memorable evening at one of the bars in town where one guy got beaten up (fortunately, not one of us, and he deserved it, too).

Apparently the local Aboriginal population isn't too fond of the number of hikers who hike on top of Ayers Rock, as it is holy territory for them. In the 20+ years since I've been there the policy may have changed. I have to admit, in retrospect, that the whole area around the Rock was very tacky touristy, although I am guilty of being there. Better are the drives and hikes that circumnavigate the Rock, with places to park and shoot photographs, especially at sunset and sunrise. The Rock is big, but maybe no more than 3 or 4 miles in circumference at the base. On my '85 visit we did some short hikes along the base, checking out some natural caves and void formations. In '87, we pretty much stuck to the hike and the beer.