Mt Carrialoo by two routes

We took advantage of a Friday afternoon seminar in Wollongong to spend Saturday in Kangaroo Valley exploring Mt Carrialoo, a sandstone plateau on the southern edge of Morton National Park. Access is from McPhails fire trail, off Jacks Corner Rd in Kangaroo Valley, just after the hydro power station. This turns out to be an almost perfect day walk.

A stiff 45m walk up the firetrail, watching out for mountain bikers, brings you to the base of the mountain, about 300m above the start point. From here there are two ways up. A clearly marked track starting at 673563 leads to an easy scramble through a break in the cliffs at 671563 that has you on the top in another 15m.

From here there are great views over Kangaroo Valley.

There is another way up that has a much wilder feel and offers great views into the National Park. Continuing along the firetrail you cross two deep gulleys. Immediately after the second, at around 673570, turn off into the wet forest and find a steep ridge running due west on the north side of the gully. It is steep, but the forest is open and easy going. The ridge leads to an effortless ascent through the cliffs at 671569. From here there are spectacular views along the north side of the mountain.

Also great views back to Fitzroy Falls.

Walking along northern cliffs, with wonderful views all the way, brings you to a second line of small cliffs. The northern end of these are little more than a rocky slope and from the top a faint track with occassional cairns leads to the Corrialoo trig point about 1.5km away at 687m - 427m above the start point. The landscape along this walk varies a great deal. It starts out as dry scrub with rock platforms.

There is even a rock overhang that would serve as a camping cave at 664565. There are interesting rock formations, like 'the nipple,'

and 'the picnic table'.

This is followed by a swampy saddle in the middle of the mountain with dense saplings and small pools of standing water, although that is not be relied upon. Finally the track ascends to flat, dry heathland, where the track becomes very clear, presumably because the vegetation does not regenerate easily, and arrives at the Trig point.

The track continues, presumably to a western descent point and the ridge to Mt Moollattoo, but we did not have time for this and returned via the northerly ascent point,

the steep ridge running east-west,

and the firetrail.

The ideal way to do Mt Corrialoo would be to ascend by the wilder, northerly route, explore the top of the mountain, and then come down by the fast, southerly route. That would take about six hours, allowing for lunch, photostops, etc, and make a more or less perfect day-walk.

More photos from Pantoneys Crown

Lise has posted more great photos from the Pantoneys Crown trip here.

Between Canberra and the coast

Stole a few hours for a bushwalk between a meeting in Canberra and a workshop on the South Coast, with a couple of volunteers from the workshop. There are two walks at the top of Clyde Mountain described in Doughton's Bushwalking in the Budawangs (ISBN 0858810727). To the west of the road is the Corn Trail, a surveyed but undeveloped route down the escarpment. This would be a nice day walk with a car at each end. It's a steep descent on ridges through open forest. I did part of it a few years ago and it looks like this.

To the east of the road is a very different walk, a circuit down to Musgrave Creek. On the steepest part of the Kings Highway there is a parking area at 56H 0769277 UTM 6062380. A short walk back uphill leads to a ridge that provides easy walking down to the creek about 300m below. It looks very much the same as the landcape on the Corn Trail.

Down at the creek, however, the landscape changes in an instant into a green tunnel, with fallen trees, vines, palms, etc.


The middle part of the walk is down the creek, getting boots wet, or, as we did, wearing sandals. Most of the time there are steep banks or small cliffs, so walking alongside is not an option. The creekbed is rocky rather than muddy. The day we were there it was rarely more than knee-deep. The pictured plant is the Gympie Stinger, Dendrocnide moroides (Thanks, David!), and has hairs on the undersides of its leaves which sting. It is related to the Giant Stinging Tree of Queensland. This is near the southern limit of it s range and maybe it is less virulent here, as I had a small encounter with it and it wasn't much worse than a european nettle, contrary to its reputation for causing agonising pain that can last for weeks. But apart from this the flora and fauna are friendly. No-one got any leeches, perhaps because it was winter, and in one of the trees growing out of the creek a Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo was feeding its offspring.

A couple of kilometres downstream the gully widens out and a firetrail crosses the creek. From here it's boots on again and a maze of firetrails, some old, some new, some disused, leads back up through the dry eucalypt forest. On the way up we had a nice encounter with some Glossy Black Cockatoos, quite happy to be watched at close range while they fed in a casuarina.

A few more pics from Pantoney

After Paul's terrific post I thought I'd add a couple more of my pics that are less illustratively useful than those of mine that Paul chose, but give a sense of why late ninteenth century German artists would have thought the area illustrated the Sublime...

Pantoneys Crown, July 2010

Pantoney’s Crown is an isolated rock massif at the entrance to the Capertee Valley. It’s in the Gardens of Stone National Park, north of the Blue Mountains and west of the Wollemi.


The Sons of the Desert have wanted to climb it since an impressive view from a lookout on the Castlereagh highway two years ago, and four of us did it over a long weekend in July.


We started from Baal Bone Gap, the only official camping area in Gardens of Stone NP. The four-wheel drive tracks to this point are fairly rugged, and turned out to be really a bit much for the Nissan X Trail that we used. We tried Moffits Trail, encountering two fallen trees that had not been cleared, but where it was possible to drive around through the bush, and one steep, rocky descent with ledges a bit big for the 20cm ground clearance on the X Trail. We got everyone out to lighten the vehicle and picked our way down very slowly without scraping the underside too much. On the plus side, we saw two Lyrebirds and had a good look at a wombat. From Baal Bone Gap we walked about 5km along the Baal Bone Plateau, with spectacular views across Crown Creek and into the mouth of the Capertee. The weathered rock formations are wonderful.


There is a faint track discernible when the plateau forms a narrow neck, probably as much down to animals as bushwalkers, and elsewhere the bush is very open, so it is easy going. Baal Bone could refer to burnt offerings to the god Baal, and the area is definitely as dry as a bone. We were there a day after heavy rain and there was not so much as a puddle on the plateau.


Baal Bone Point is a massive cube of rock at end of the plateau, with views across to Pantoneys Crown.





There is a fairly easy descent just next to the Point. We rigged a rope to ease the descent only because there was a convenient tree.


From here a ridge leads to the saddle between the Point and the Crown. Because it is so dry there is little undergrowth and no need for a track. From the saddle a drainage system runs down to Crown Creek, starting out as shallow, dry creekbeds and turning into steep, rocky gullies as the various creeks join up.

About 20m walk down a creekbed we started to find small, unappetising pools of muddy water, but also some excellent flat, well-drained places to camp. Another 20m walk brought us to a steep gully with reeds in the bottom and some pools of clear water, but by this stage there was nowhere convenient to put a tent up, so we filled up with water and camped higher up.


Our campsite was protected by a miraculous apparition of the Madonna of the Bush


The campsite also had an excellent view of the Crown, ready for the morning


The climb up the Crown is straightforward, following a ridge from the saddle to the cliff line. There is a gap in the cliffs just at the point where they start to face northwest, and we found a previous party’s cairn at the bottom to reassure us that this was a practical way up.


The final scramble is about 60 vertical metres, with three or four ledges that require pack-hauling and a short chimney at the top. We used a rope to get back down the chimney and for pack-hauling.


The top of the Crown offers spectacular views in all directions. It slopes down to the northwest and the top is heavily wooded on that slope. We saw one decent-sized puddle on a rock shelf, but if camping up here you’d need to bring all your water.


This is the view back across the saddle to Baal Bone Point


The next morning we followed a contour line from our watering point until we reached a convenient point to drop down to the management track that runs along Crown Creek. A feature of the landscape are stands of Australian cypress (Callitris) with spectacularly rugged bark.


The last bit down to the track


We found no surface water in the actual creek, so the water higher up must stay on the surface only because the gullies are so rocky. It would be a mistake to expect to find any water in this valley unless it has rained quite recently. The management track climbs around 300m in the last 2km back to Baal Bone Gap, so although our third day was only a short walk we were ready to take a rest at the top!


We drove out on the Bicentennial National Trail, hoping for a better road. The first few kilometres are through a beautiful, fern-filled valley with sandstone cliffs on both sides. Only one fallen tree blocked the track. It could get pretty soft along here after heavy rain, though. Then we found ourselves facing a very steep, rocky incline with serious ruts and a diagonal rock ledge about 30cm high right across. Fine in a Landcruiser, but not really ‘softroader’ territory. We got up by piling rocks in front of the ledge to reduce the height (lots of suitable rocks about as were not the first people to do this) and then taking a run at it with just the driver on board. After this the road is fine.


This is a spectacular piece of country, and navigation is straightforward due to the obvious landmarks and light vegetation, but the poor road access and the lack of reliable water mean that a bit of preparation is needed before taking a walk here. Without a serious 4WD it might be better to walk in from the far end of the Crown Creek management trail, which can be accessed from Glen Davis Road.

To see these photos in hi res, and more from the trip, click here