Rachel Grindlay

Day 1: Tayan Pic
John organised permission for us to access Tayan Pic through one of the private properties surrounding it’s base. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a 750 ascent & descent in one day (well, I probably did at Lake Macquarie Rogaine but that was over a series of ups and downs rather than one go).

The initial sections were pretty good from a scrub perspective. Tom picked his timing though – he elected to stop about half way up – almost as soon as he left us the scrub turned baaad. At least I could explain what Strongleg Ridge is like at the moment as sections were pretty comparable – high saplings… though this had the added bonus of a very healthy dose of hardenbergia. John did most of the hard work up the front – leaving the rest of us wondering what the issue was.

Since the scrub had slowed us considerably we had lunch on the summit. That meant there was plenty of time for reading the logbook and learning about some of the local families who frequently visit the top. Then we spent quite a while trying, and failing miserably, to get a group photo – though it was at least highly entertaining.

We took a different route down which at some stages was considerably scrubbier than the equivalent section we’d come up, but in exchange we got more pagodas, some hand stencils and great views.

 

Day 2: Tramway Trail & Blacks Corner

After an exceedingly cold night (-4°C nearby) we woke to a sunny morning. The 8:30am start meant the ice covering the windscreen had time to melt before we had to go anywhere.

As always the second day of a weekend trip is a bit harder to get motivated for, but the Tramway Trail was formed for a lot further than we were expecting. Which meant Tom was still with us by the time we got to the cliff edge for morning tea.

After morning tea we tried to follow the cliff edge but got stymied by a drop off the pagodas – but worth the scramble for the views!

We had lovely views from our lunch spot across to our lunch spot of the previous day (Tayan Pic). Not often you get to do that! Though it seems none of my photos of the view made the cull.

A few of us were keen to find the jutty out rock we’d seen on our way up so we left the others to have post-lunch snooze while we diced with exposure on the edge of it.

A much quicker return as we knew the best way to go (most of the time) and didn’t need to stop and look at the historic artifacts on our way back.

A set of excellent day walks to make for a great weekend!

It has been almost thirteen years since my only previous visit to this area. I had very little memory of the trip, and hadn’t taken many photos so couldn’t jog my memory that way either. It’s definitely worth doing before another 13 years are up! Unlike some walks where you pop out at the end and you get a view, this one has views for the majority of the time.

I was a bit surprised at how new, fancy and long the boardwalk was at the start of the walk. The walk out to Mt Bushwalker lookout is very straightforward and can be recommended to almost anyone who is in the area.

Once we left the boardwalk, and shiny metal direction arrows we followed the cliffs around to the top of Gadara Pass for morning tea. There’s some pretty straight-forward scrambling to get down Gadara Pass. This has been supplemented by copious amounts of cord. The top 3m would be a bit tricky without the fixed rope (though we managed without it in 2010), but the rest of the pass does not really need the cord.

However someone obviously got a good deal on cord and wanted to put it to use in the bush, as there is a lot of it. Cord was anywhere there was a vague slope and in some places where there wasn’t any slope at all.

Combined with the cord someone has gone to town with orange spray paint. In some sections every rock on the track was sprayed orange. Where the track turned corners there were spray painted lines or arrows. You would need to make a concerted effort to get lost – but it was very intrusive. Better or worse than pink tape? I guess it depends if it washes off over time. In places where the spray paint wasn’t enough (!) there was fluro yellow tape on the trees.

The forecast for Saturday held a fair bit of rain. So it wasn’t that surprising that the blue skies were soon full of clouds and by the time we made it to the summit of Talaterang Mountain we were in the cloud.

The next hour we covered about 700m – probably everyone’s favourite section of the day (not). What’s not to love about 3m high sword grass to wade through, followed by head height ferns and then a banksia graveyard.

But after that things got easier as we could pick our way along rocky platforms near the cliff edge.

I was thrilled that the cloud cleared overnight and I got up at first light to watch the light slowly reveal the amazing views near our campsite.

Sunday was mainly retracing our steps – though I took us around the worst of the sword grass and ferns on the return. According to the GPS we were only about 25m west of where we’d been the day before – what a difference 25m makes!

I don’t think we’d realised quite how jarring the orange spots were until we returned to them on Sunday afternoon. Wow, someone really had a lot of orange paint.

It was definitely one of those weekends which proves you shouldn’t be put off by weather forecasts as we didn’t really get any rain while we were walking.

It had been quite a while since I’d been in on the Long Swamp Trail towards Baal Bone Gap/Point Cameron. I needed a road condition report to work out if I could plan my Pantoneys trip from that side – friends had been in a couple of months earlier and said the road was fine, they’d had a 4WD but hadn’t used the 4WD functions. (But maybe I misinterpreted). So when I asked the trip participants if the 4WD owners could drive us out to the start I was expecting it to be just a bit of insurance. It ended up being fortunate we had 2 4WDs and 2 safe and careful drivers as the road was a mess. Fortunately we made it out to where I wanted to park a bit slower than expected but with everything intact and no boggings.

Having left Lithgow at -2°C we were glad the temperatures had made it into positives by the time we started walking. It wasn’t long before most layers were off and we were walking in beautiful, still, sunny conditions.

The ridge between Baal Bone Gap and Baal Bone Point had a fair bit of eucalypt and wattle regrowth. We tried to stick to the rocky sections to avoid the worst of it, but there were some slows bits as we pushed through the tightly packed trees. The closer we got to the point the less scrub we encountered. I was surprised to startle a wallaby at one point on the rocky cliff edge!

The down climb off the point still has the same logs in place, and the trip report wouldn’t be complete without a couple of shots of people in the same position. (See the same position from previous trips in 2020, 2014, 2007)

The flatter section of ridge descending to the saddle was a delightful walk. It was what many ridges used to be like pre-fires – and a sad indictment on current conditions that this one seemed so extraordinary.

The lower sections of the ridge and the saddle seemed to contain every kind of spikey plant known to the area. But the human pin cushions soon made it on to the slopes and eventually found ourselves at the base of the Southern Pass onto the Crown. Rick and I were the only ones who’d been to Pantoneys previously so knew what was coming. The others said the warning photos I’d sent out in advance hadn’t quite translated to what they had to do – but with a fair bit of pack passing we all made it up with no issues.

The still conditions lasted all weekend so it was very pleasant camping near the cliff edge and having happy hour on the edge.

We popped into see how the water source was compared to our last visit in the height of the wet period. I was surprised to find a couple of small pools which would do if you were drying of thirst.

The views from the summit were spectacular. I spent a fair bit of time at the summit cairn trying to find the logbook unsuccessfully. I had given up until Jonas spotted a plastic big inside the base of the cairn. He thought it was rubbish but when he said he could see the word Hercules I knew we were in luck.

With some Jenga skills employed the logbook was retrieved and signed. It’s clearly not found by many parties as it has been going since 2001 and isn’t a very big notebook. There’s only 2 pages left – so maybe take a replacement if you’re heading in – though on current signage that will probably last 3 years! (we were the 4th entry in 12 months)

In 2020 I took a saturated logbook out with us as the container it was in no longer existed – but we’d managed to find this logbook on our trips in 2005, 2007 and 2014 as there’s written evidence in the book.

On every other trip where we’ve descended to Crown Creek there’s stories of Tom failing to navigate us down as intended. I’ve never had to do the nav for that section before and I made a bit of a mess of it on my first attempt. The topo map is only 20m contours which is tricky, and despite Tom furnishing me with a 5m contour map on my phone it was so detailed I struggled to place where we were on that compared with the topo map. Anyway, eventually after crossing two gullies and then still ending up on the wrong ridge I decided we would take our luck in the creek. It turned out to be much easier going – thanks to the local wombats (or maybe pigs 🙁 ). We had lunch at a wider grassy section a few hundred metres before we hit the road.

Crown Creek was flowing fairly strongly – I was a little bemused as I wasn’t expecting to have water (we’d been carrying it for the whole weekend). Then decided it must not be good for drinking. But when I got the photos home and showed them to Tom he was surprised at the flow – so I guess it’s been dry when we’ve been there previously. We spotted a creature ahead on the road at one point – not sure if it was a pig or a wild dog (!!) – it was odd looking whatever it was.

It had been 15 years since I’d walked up Crown Creek Trail to Baal Bone Point – it’s feels like more than 300m of ascent. The incline at times is brutal. But we had nice crisp temperatures for walking in and the views made for a nice distraction.

Back at the cars shortly after 4pm and quickly away to avoid driving the road in the dark. We came across some less careful drivers who’d been retrieved from one of the large boggy puddles – we were warned not to drive straight through (we weren’t planning too!).

An excellent weekend and we couldn’t have asked for better weather – just need that road to get graded. It’s hard to imagine it was once in a state where we took a 2WD in (admittedly getting bogged in the process).

I’d only been to Venus Tor once before, 12 years ago. It couldn’t have been in more different conditions – a drizzly, foggy day where we saw no views. We were also on a much, much harder trip – an overnight trip crossing the Grose Valley. This trip on the other hand; we couldn’t have had better conditions and a very cruisy route plan for the day (7km – all on track or rough pad). Today was an absolutely stunning day in the mountains – winter bushwalking at its finest.

I have walked the Kanangra to Katoomba route three times previously – way back in 2007 as a 3 day trip, (& photos), in 2017 in 1 day and then in 2018 as a 2 day trip. I thought I had a complete set, but with the devastation caused by the bushfires in 2019 and subsequent regrowth changing the nature of the walk, I now have a new version.

When I saw Huw had put K2K in 3 days on the program for the weekend after Easter it seemed a way to make up for my lack of exercise over Easter. I was also keen to see what the scrub was like as it’s always hard to judge what other people’s scrub meters are set at.

I vividly remembered how destroyed I’d been at the end of the 2018 trip so I was counting every gram that went into my pack – probably resulting in my lightest overnight pack ever – 7.1km base weight (excl food and water).

The taxi arrived to drive us out to Kanangra. I was pretty nervous when the driver said he’d never been there and hoped we’d be able to give him directions. Muttering to Huw “does he realise we’re going out on a dirt road?”, Huw’s reply of “well, he’ll find out” didn’t instil a lot of confidence. When we eventually got to the Kanangra Walls turn-off the driver was about to pull over and drop us off! Huw, non-plussed, says “oh no, it’s another 20km along here”. To his credit the drive didn’t bat an eyelid as we hit the dirt – unfortunately the road isn’t in great condition currently and wasn’t helped by being very wet. However, we made it to the Walls car park with only a few hard pot hole hits and the driver was paid and on his way back to Katoomba.

The drive had been somewhat slower than expected so we didn’t start walking until just before 10am. Given the low cloud there wasn’t much point going to the lookout even though Jonas hadn’t been there before.

We were a bit surprised to head down the steps and find a radio blaring with nobody in sight. The workmen’s cars were the only other ones in the car park and one of them appeared a bit further along the track. A lyrebird further up the track provided a much more enjoyable soundtrack! The views also popped in and out as we wandered out to the plateau.

The plateau is a lot more open than it used to be – the banksias which burnt haven’t rebounded and it feels like it would be harder to lose people at the moment.

We had a late morning (only just) tea at the end of Crafts Walls around 11:45am. Then it was on, over all the familiar ups and downs. The descent into Gabes Gap was quite vegetated, though no problems finding the track. We had a late lunch on Mt High and Mighty – glad that the weather seemed to have cleared up. Unfortunately a new bout of rain swept through as we were going up the knolls so the raincoats came out again.

The track out to Cloudmaker had been much the same as pre-fires – a little more bushy in a few places – but clear and easy to follow – up until about 100m below the Cloudmaker summit. Things suddenly became very overgrown and I picked my way up a very vague pad to the summit. I then spent a good 5 minutes trying to get the logbook out of the container. I don’t think the container had previously been attached to the rocks – but now there is a metal spike holding it in place – so you can’t turn it over to shake the logbook out. Eventually I got it out, and the others still hadn’t arrived. I then heard Huw & Jonas off to the north. Frances arrived at the summit shortly after so I quickly put an entry in and we headed off to meet the others and find out way down to Dex Creek. I noted there had been a few parties heading out to do K2K in recent weeks so I was hoping they had left a bit of a track for us to follow!

We navigated our way down to Dex Creek, on and off the track, without any great issues, arriving at 4:50pm. As I finished putting my tarp up it started raining. As we’d had light squalls going across most of the day I thought this would be the same. But no! It bucketed down for about 45 minutes. The forecast had been for any rain to clear up by late afternoon – and certainly nothing of this volume.

I knew the tarp I’d brought wasn’t seam sealed as Tom had had a miserable time in it in unseasonable rain in the NT last year – but I hadn’t bothered doing anything about it as I was not expecting rain at night. There wasn’t much I could do other than squeeze my wet hair out as the drips came down onto my head through the centre seam… Somewhat belatedly I realised I could collect the rain water off the tarp and make some soup. It wasn’t long before I had a cup of water in run-off and then some hot soup to warm me up.

Eventually the rain stopped and we were able to get a fire going and dry out a bit. At one point a native bush rat wandered past knocking over Frances’ cup & spoon – but none of us had any issues with pesky creatures overnight.

We were aiming for an early start the next morning as we knew it could be a very long day. We were away a bit later than planned at 7:30am. The first 500m out of Dex was clear and easy, but then things got very slow. With the downpour the night before the bush was saturated, so it didn’t take long pushing though 3-4m high regrowth for me also to be saturated.

We were navigating via a combination of map & compass (me & Jonas), memory/instinct from many, many trips on the route (Huw) and GPS/recent trace (Frances). I was completely confused about our direction, which Frances was saying was fine, so I was happy when we reached a small clearing and I could look at where we were on her phone. We had headed north directly after getting on to the ridge above Dex (rather than heading towards Carra Top then swinging). We didn’t find any evidence of a track here and it was very slow going. It was a nice break to reach the rocky outcrop prior to the saddle south of 953 where we could clamber up and get some views.

Then it was back into the scrub and over 953. We got some of the classic views that this section of ridge used to be so memorable for coming off the northern side of the 953 high point, just before the little scramble, heading into the saddle before Mount Moorilla Maloo.

It was relatively straight-forward walking from there to Mount Moorilla Maloo, but as we swung north-west we lost the pad we’d been on and were back in some pretty thick regrowth. After swinging north heading towards Mount Amarina we found a pad which made life easier. It still went through 3-4m high regrowth but we were perhaps going at 2km/hour rather than 1km/hour. When we found ourselves in a slightly rocky/open section around Mt Amarina we took the opportunity for morning tea. We had earned it after 2.5 hours covering 3km.

We continued following the pad over Kullieatha Peak and then to the slopes of Mt Strongleg where it started traversing the slopes to the east. Jonas & I lost it, and I was inclined to just go on the main ridge but Huw reminded me that the trail had previously contoured around on the east, so we persisted. Meanwhile Frances was 20m below us and said she was on a pad. It wasn’t clear if what she was on continued so the rest of us headed up as we were getting stuck in mountain holly. Turns out we should have gone with Frances as she was able to follow the pad around to the main ridge without any issues. We picked up a pad coming off the Strongleg summit but it would have been faster for our party to have stayed low.

Fortunately the vegetation once we started descending the Strongleg ridge eased off. There was still regrowth (more podolobium & hardenbergia rather than eucalypt) but a lot lower and less dense. We followed a pad most of the way down. Unfortunately we lost the pad close to the bottom and briefly ended up tangled in passionfruit vine (not sure what it actually is but that’s what it looks like). I also hadn’t been following the compass as we we’d just been sticking to the pad, so we ended on bluffs above Kanangra Creek. Possibly if we’d been following the ridge line we’d have relocated the pad earlier – we found it for the 100m or so down to Kanangra Creek and a very well deserved lunch just before 2pm.

I was quick to hop in for a swim – and delighted to wash the hundreds of leaves that had fallen down my shirt off. Given the time it was a pretty easy decision to camp on the Coxs rather than push for Mobbs Swamp. This allowed us the luxury of an hour sprawled out, drying out tents and relaxing. We were accompanied through lunch by a large monitor that was moving around in the bush and cliffs around us the entire time we were there – I’ve never seen one quite so active – possibly agitated as we were sitting on his favourite sunning rock?

But we still had to get to the base of Yellow Pup, so a couple of crossings of Kanangra Creek and the Coxs River were needed. Both were flowing well, though we didn’t get more than just over (my) knee-deep. Huw said the whole area had changed, but my memory from 3 trips over 16 years wasn’t good enough to remember what it had been like before!

We found the start of the track up Yellow Pup and then set about finding places to camp. There wasn’t a lot of great camping spots, but we all found something. It was a pretty warm evening, quite the contrast to the night before. Despite my apprehension about the big day the next day I had to admit the Coxs has much nicer ambience than Mobbs Swamp.

We agreed on a 6:30am departure the next morning. Some people were ready earlier so set off as they were ready. I was ready at exactly 6:30am so that was when I left. The lower part of Yellow Dog didn’t seem to have burnt in the fires and was much the same as in the past (though maybe less used so a bit more vegetation hanging over the track). I caught up with Frances on the first long switchback, and then we found Huw not long after that. I waited for Jonas – the only one in the group not to have done this route before – to make sure he made the turns.

Jonas & I overtook the others again and made it to the top at 8am. Time for breakfast, or more importantly time for a cup of coffee!

We set off again around 8:45am. The track from Mt Yellow Dog through to Mobbs exists but is very overgrown. We took a bit longer than we would have in the past – having morning tea around 10:30am at Mobbs. I was quite surprised to see what the campsite at Mobbs now consists of. I’ve only camped there one before, back in 2007, and my memory was a large gloomy flat stretching a long way into the bush, with room for many, many tents. I didn’t poke my head off the track, but it seems now there’s just the one clearing, which is all a bit slopey and wouldn’t fit that many tents. I didn’t take a photo of it.

After a bit of pfaffing getting water at Mobbs Swamp we were off again. The track from Mobbs to Medlow Gap was pretty easy going in the scheme of things. Frances said last year it had been muddy the whole way, but fortunately it had dried out.

As we made the final major climb of the day up Mt Debert the weather closed in. There were clouds and light rain as far as you could see and the wind picked up considerably. I wasn’t looking forward to the walk along Narrow Neck full stop but it would be even worse in those conditions!

The strong wind was good for something though – by the time we had made it to the base of Tarros Ladder the cloud had been largely swept away. We opted for lunch on the eastern side round the corner from the ladder as it was out of the wind and had reasonable views. It was also after 1pm and my stomach was rumbling.

Frances had been muttering about being worried about going up Tarros, but I knew she’d done it so many times before I hadn’t taken her that seriously. But once she got on the ladders the verbal commentary and stress coming out her mouth was quite a surprise! We all made it up and took in the views (while trying not to get blown away) from the top.

Not that the ascent is over at the point, I hurried on wanting to get the day over with and also hoping to get out of the wind. The last time I’d done K2K we’d done the same distance on the second day and it had destroyed me. And this time, with the landslips on Narrow Neck closing the road to vehicles, we had an extra 3km to do. My feet weren’t in the best shape after 2.5 days of wet feet, but having aired them out at lunch I was hoping it would be enough to get me through.

I was still pleased to see the locked gate as it was a definitive marker of how far we’d come, but still 3km to go…

That said we probably got to take in a few views that would have gone past in a blur previously.

The lone car which had been out on Narrow Neck when the landslip occurred has been well and truly trashed.

I was at the top of the new access track at Narrow Neck Lookout just after 5pm – earlier than our 5:30pm estimate. Feeling a lot better than I did after the 2018 trip.

The lady who lived over the road from where we’d left our cars popped her head out to ask about our trip and then we were off back home. I never enjoy walking Narrow Neck but otherwise it was a reasonably enjoyable trip – particularly given what I was imagining it could have been! Excellent company and great to get out for 3 days after failing to utilise the Easter weekend.

This was advertised as “almost entirely off-track exploration” but was also “aiming for a mid-afternoon finish”. Well we definitely had an entirely off-track exploration, but we did not achieve a mid-afternoon finish. Being back at the cars about 5:15pm was hardly a late day but when you’re trying to get back for the Club’s annual reunion weekend it wasn’t ideal. It also wasn’t ideal that it was a 32°C day in mid-March. I’ve been so used to worrying about rain I didn’t really focus much on the temperature forecast leading into the trip.

The first few hundred metres we picked up an old fire trail, and when that ended the going was initially quite good as the soil seemed too poor to support much regrowth. We got to an interesting section of dissected ridge which was slower but fun to negotiate and gave us some good views.

Once we got through the dissected ridge line we really slowed down getting out to the first knoll. It was scrubby, not the worst I’ve been in, just quite a lot of vines, which made it very slow. And somehow all up that the first 5km out to Three Mates Bluff took us 3 hours.

Fortunately Tom and I had studied the slope maps the night before so were pretty confident we would be able to find a down to the river from the bluff. I’m not sure the rest of the party was so confident as Tom headed off to scout a route down. It wasn’t long before we got the call to follow him down. I do love a direct route and this one was a goody – though maybe a bit more exposure than I had advertised to the participants.

After we’d got through a series of scrambles Tom thought we’d just be able to walk down from there. But then we hit an interesting conglomerate cliff line, but I was able to find a way around it on the left and then the rest of the slope was straight-forward. By amazing coincidence at the same time we got to the river there were 4 kayakers managing their kayaks through the rapids. I did not take long to get in the water – it had been a hard morning’s work but at least we now had the ability to cool down and recharge with lunch.

After lunch we headed upstream, criss-crossing the river at rapids (picked out from the aerials) to avoid bluffs/scrubby sections. The section of the Shoalhaven we walked up had some very attractive cliffs, which was fortunate as they could distract us from the swathes of Cobblers Pegs we were walking through. My shorts resembled a carpet of them for most of the time we were walking the banks.

We had another much needed swim before ascending from the southern end of Apple Tree Flat to the Brooks Plateau Trail. We enjoyed some shade and views from a convenient cave just before getting to the very top.

I think everyone was very happy to hit the Brooks Plateau fire trail and have 2.5km of easy walking to finish the day.

A much tougher trip than planned, and would have been more enjoyable if the temperature had 10°C dropped off it!

Everyone headed to the Club Reunion afterwards where we enjoyed another swim in the Kangaroo River before settling in for an enjoyable, social evening.