The Vanishing Roots Ridge Trail: Kanangra to Kowmung

Some sons in full training mode decided to walk from the Kanagra walls to the Kowmung river. The plan was to walk down the Hughes Trail, down the river, and back up the Roots Ridge trail.

A lovely day dawned, and after staying overnight at the Caves House at Jenolan and having seen some of the truly impressive caves, we headed up. Some minor car snafus meant that we had to go to Oberon and back, which slowed us down by a couple of hours.

So it was after 10.30 in the morning when we turned on our satellite tracking so that Paul and Lisa could spy on our progress, and headed off.

We started by following the plateau walk and were rewarded by views of the Thurat Spires. Since you can never have too many photos of these, here we go again:


We then took the turn south and started down the spur leading to Cottage Rock: we passed the amazing coal seam near Coal Seam Cave. In this photo you can see how the rock sticks out and the coal itself has eroded back:



Soon we were at Cottage Rock: though actually not that soon. The promised cairn was nowhere to be found, and the track notes had no grid reference for the start of the track. After walking along the length of the massif a couple of times, we resorted to figuring out a priori from the terrain where it ought to be. This worked fine; we should have done it earlier. Soon we were at the scramble, and from the top we got an interesting perspective on Mt Cloudmaker and Gangerang Range from the south.



After a late lunch on the rock, we headed on. Our track notes told us to look out for hard to find junctions at various numbers of kilometres along the track. The GPS function that tells you how far you have travelled as the track winds was invaluable for following instructions like this, that don't have grid references.

Eventually we came to the point where the Gingra track and the Roots Ridge track are supposed to diverge.

Thanks to the late start, we decided to head straight down the Roots Ridge instead of going to the Hughes, for which there wasn't time.

We were sure we were at the right point, since we where at the right point in the terrain, the right number of km from the last turnoff, and there were markings on the tree as described in the notes. But the Roots Ridge trail was nowhere to be found! In fact the markings that were supposed to point to it pointed towards (on a natural reading of them) to the extension of the Gingra. We looked around for a while but to no avail. Pretty clearly the Roots Ridge trail has been overgrown by dense saplings near the turnoff. We later met another party who told us that you need to bash about 40m through the saplings to find the trail. We got at most 30 m through, so no luck.

Having not found the Roots Ridge we decided to continue on the Gingra, and if time permitted take our original route down the Hughes, and hope to find a campsite by the river closer than the recommended one.

The Gingra gets very overgrown after the turnoff, and was pretty much a bush bash down a ridge after a while. When we finally got the area the Hughes was in, there was only an hour and a half left of light. We thought that something close to  a bush bash down 600m followed by a serious river crossing and no guarantee of a campsite that didn't involve three more crossings was not doable in the available time! But we did have the time, if we route marched, to get back to the Coal Seam Cave where there is a potable water supply.

So we headed back at full steam and found the cave. And what a lovely campsite! There was rain predicted, so the security of a cave was great. And the water was delicious: an old plastic drum under a drip where the water is filtered through the sandstone.

Here we both are at the cave:





We had dinner - imported American freeze dried vegetable pasta. Superb; why can't Australasians do this well? Only 9 mins of soaking, al dente pasta and big chunks of beautiful vegetable you might think was fresh in a nice cheese sauce. We've had worse at restaurants.

The next morning we headed back to the carpark and checked out the lookouts at the walls that we always seem to miss, and the track to the waterfall. Then we made it back to the car just in time for the rain to start! But not before a couple of nice pics: one of an ominous cloud over the Walls:



And the other of the Walls and Mt Cloudmaker: a great perspective on the first part of the K2K walk we did a few weeks ago:

A Stroll in the Park

After the all too exciting events of last weekend, the Sons deemed it a good idea to get back on the horse quickly, as it were. But to do so in a nice, mild confidence building way! So we settled on a stroll in the park: 17 (21 it turned out) km from Mt Kuring-gai station to Cowan via Brerowra Waters.

We left the station, and all met up at the track head. And off we marched, on a lovely morning on well made track. So relaxed were we that there was time to take a picture of this impressive spider:



We soon came to a remarkable swamp with a kind of button grass growing in it:



There was then a lovely climb of about 200m on a very well made track that still managed to have a wilderness feel to it. Some very nice views appeared, and after a while we get to the Brerowra Creek:



We then descended to Brerowra waters; turns out that despite all the enticing ads on the web, if you don't want to shell out for the Brerowra Waters Inn, there's not much to eat there unless you want fish and chips! But we had fun crossing on the ferry; once over to the food, and once back. Here's a image of the ferry from when we climbed out of Brerowra Waters:



There was then a series of roughly 200m climbs. In a saddle between twin peaks we found a remarkable small but very deep bathing pool. Maureen, who jumps into all available clean water sources, couldn't resist. Here she is, as if modelling for Cleopatra's Bath:



Then it was down and up and down and up...

Close to Cowan we came to a dirt road that gave access to the Old Pacific Highway: since we had realized that Paul wouldn't be able to get a train from Cowan (they wouldn't stop where his car was parked) we decided to all share a cab back to station with regular service. So we got the highway and called a cab. Minor mistake. After half an hour we called the cab company, and still no car had taken the job and no sign of one. We cancelled the cab, and walked to Brerowra down the highway. Actually, it was a pleasant evening without much traffic, so we walked counter-flow to the traffic with headlights on so we could be seen. After a pleasant and speedy roadbash we were at Brewowra, where a train was due soon.

WIth the roadbash it was about 21km, and a lovely scenic walk. Well worth doing, and a great way for us to shake out last weeks cobwebs!