Press on Regardless! It’s the SUBW motto, but sometimes, it’s good to wait for better weather… On the weekend of 22 – 23 Feb I organized a trip to Bungonia Gorge. I had planned to run the trip in January, but the temperatures on that weekend were forecast to be in the high 30s up towards 40C. So I…
Views through Danae (Photo by Stephen Sheehan) Danae Brook is one of Kanangra’s most iconic slot canyons and well known for being a long, challenging, yet spectacular trip. There are several exit options, but arguably the most interesting one involves scrambling up and over Thurat Spires. With my…
We were up for an adventshaaaaaaaa ( “wickeeeeeed!”, “epiiiiiiiic!”). So we met up at North Richmond as usual, drove up to the Claustral car park and started walking – 17 minutes behind schedule as the German pointed out. This actually turned out to be good timing because a few meters down the track we had a beautiful view across the mountains with a really colourful sunset. We continued…
After weeks of baking dry conditions, a little rain fell on Thursday and Friday and this brought welcome relief to the parched mountains and set the stage for perfect weather conditions for this very popular trip! Indeed, it was a company of some 15 people who made their way down the Wolgan Valley on Friday evening and setup a camp some distance away from the busy main Newnes campground. The stage…
We went to Devil’s Pinch (sat) and Pipeline canyons (sun) in Wolgan Valley over the weekend (Jan 11-12). NB. Pipeline track is noted as closed on the NPWS website (needs to be re-routed on the Glen Davis side) but I called them before going and it is open for access on the southern side. However, you…
The Wentworth Creek takes a very meandering route through rugged terrain down to meet the Grose river north of Faulconbridge. There are several ridges that run out from the towns on the plateau, with firetrails running at least part of the way along most of them. This area doesn’t seem to get visited much given how close to transport it is, I guess it falls between the cracks of being much harder walking than the byzantine network of old tourist tracks on the southern side of the highway, yet not as picturesque as say the Kowmung. In any…
This was going to be a trip down the Colo River from Crawford’s Lookout to near Canoe Ck. However, after posting the trip on SUBW, Alexa wondered if the Coloul Range Fire Trail was actually open and not it wasn’t (that was our starting point), Grant called to tell me that the water levels at this time of year are low and the distances would make it a bit of a push for two days (next time I’ll make it a three day trip), and T2 emailed with low water information as well. Thank you!…
What better way to escape the scorching temperatures of Australia’s hottest year on record than to hang out in some of the more remote canyons in the Wollemi National Park? That said, we nearly didn’t make it to the Cooroongooba campground, with 11 fires flaring up in the Wollemi region just before Christmas and the campground taken over by remote firefighting helicopter operations. Fortunately, the…
The ridge trail was at times faint but as it turned more to the north near hill 998 we kept on east, then eventually round to the south, down the scrubby untracked ridge down to a point where the vegetation cleared a little and the patchwork of mostly burnt with some unburnt bush on Waratah Ridge was visible. Other ridges…
Just a quick report on my 3 peaks walk the other day. Summary is I just made it, but it was hard going and I wasn’t very well for most of it. Set off about 5 am and made good time to the Cox’s river, just over 5 hours. Went down Yellow Pup track but then up Mt Konangaroo & Bullagowar as I was doing it “anti-clockwise” with Guougang the first peak, having done it the “normal” direction previously. That was…