Inspired by the great series of blog posts by Cindy Bruchmann Five Shots I am continuing my own rip off 10 Pics from the Sticks. I’ll be playing catch up with some hikes me and my wife have done in recent years before hopefully giving new material from this year. In January 2012 my wife and I took our real first serious hike together at The Glasshouse Mountains. The Glass House Mountains are on the way to the Sunshine Coast and consist of 11 mountains which include Mt Beerburrum, Mt Ngungun and Mt Tibrogargan. We had done a couple of things previously, a hike around a forest park in suburbia in 2009, a 4km jaunt up to Baroon Lookout and back with friends the same year which was very enjoyable. Baroon Lookout has featured in our lives ever since in long day hikes with various people and was also where I picked out a stick for Karen and her best friend which were then lacquered and given to them to keep. However notable as an event for us though, on that day we only really covered 5kms.
In early 2012 I was yet again on a health kick and had found hiking with full gear of 23kgs on my back was a good way to burn calories. We arrived at Mt Tibrogargan after lunch and began the steep ascent 800m up to the Mountain View lookout. The track up Tibrogargan is notoriously steep, rocky, uneven and has a chain on the side of the path at points. Maybe to stop people falling off the path but more likely to help pull themselves up. I’ll admit near the end a couple of times I made use of that function but only a couple.
We reached a ledge and I took the pack off for the last bit of the climb while my wife Karen waited. At the last bit where I had to hug the wall to pull myself up onto a rock and I thought better of it, noting if I injured myself Karen was going to struggle to get back down with my pack and I was starting a new job the next day. You could say I chickened out but I’m keen to try again. You could say it though. 🙂
On our way back down a guy came running past us up the mountain with a camel back. I’m pretty sure we’d seen him coming back down when we were going up. Talk about fit. With time to burn we decided to do the 6km Trachyte circuit which is very flat compared to the terrain we usually tackle on the Sunshine Coast Great Hinterland Walk.
There were Bee farms, and the Jack Ferris lookout and after having climbed the mountain we found this a very easy going walk.
The sun set on our way back and we were both glad when we rocked up the car park just as it had gotten dark.
We have since done longer hikes but it was a good one to start off with. A few different friends have posted pictures from the top of Mt Tibrogagan so I will have to try again soon.
-Lloyd Marken
Back to the Drawing Board Productions 
Awesome hike! I liked Karen looking out to the wilderness–it made your eyes travel to see what she was looking at. A healthy climb indeed. Thanks for stealing my idea and making it your own. A compliment, for sure. 🙂
Yeah I’d been thinking about doing hiking ones for a while and looking at your posts inspired me. I was like “Look at how good that is. Do something like that only not as good.” 🙂
Oh, stop. Your pictures are on the other side of the world for me. Very interesting!
I’m trying to link different Five Shots in each one so let me know if there are any you’d like linked in particular?