Tag: photo

Exploring the Jagungal

Peter Thomas kindly arranged for a variety of ACT Scout leaders to take a tour of the Jagungal portion of Kosciuszko National Park under the guidance of Robert Green. Robert is very experienced with this area, and has recently written a book. Five leaders from the Macarthur Scout Group decided to go along on this tour and take a look at our hiking options in the area.

The first challenge is getting to the area. The campsite we used for the first day is only accessible to four wheel drive vehicles — the slope down to the camp site from Nimmo Plain is quite rocky and has some loose sections. That said, the Landcruiser I was in had no trouble making the trip, and the group managed to get two car style four wheel drives into the area without problems as well. The route to Nimmo Plain from the south of Canberra is as follows:

We explored two areas which are both a short drive from Nimmo Plain. We in fact didn’t explore anything at Nimmo Plain itself, but as the intermediate point where the road forks it makes sense to show that bit of route first. From Nimmo Plain, it you turn left you end up where we camped for the first day, which is a lovely NWPS camp site with fire pits, a pit toilet, and trout in the river.

The route to that camp site is like this:

From this campsite we did a 14km loop walk, which took in a series of huts and ruins along relatively flat and easy terrain. There are certainly good walking options here for Scouts, especially those which don’t particularly like hills. The route for the first day was like this:

Its a fantastic area, very scenic without being difficult terrain…

As you can see from the pictures, life around the camp fire that evening was pretty hard. One note on the weather though — even at the start of April we’re already starting to see very cool overnight weather in this area, with a definite frost on the tents and cars in the morning. I wouldn’t want to be hiking in this area much later in the season than this without being prepared for serious cold weather.

The next day we drove back to Nimmo Plain and turned right. You then proceed down a dirt road that is marked as private property, but has a public right of way through to the national park. At the border of the park you can leave the car again and go for another walk. The route to this second entrance to the park is like this:

This drive on the second morning involved a couple of river crossings, with some representative pictures below. Why does the red Landcruiser get to do the crossing three times? Well that’s what happens when you forget to shut the gate…

Following that we did a short 5km return walk to Cesjack’s Hut, which again wasn’t scenic at all…

YA-90

Ok, so now that I’ve rediscovered walking to trigs while pursuing my hobby of trying to kill Mr Carden, I am enthused to do some more urban walking.

The only urban trig I haven’t been to is YA-90 on Isaacs Ridge. There are also three geocaches along the way I’d like to collect to. I propose we stage a walk from Isaacs as there’s plenty of parking and do this one some evening when its cooler.

Total distance should be about 4km return, with about 150 meters of vertical ascent. It should take about an hour.

We did this walk on a warm afternoon on new year’s day. The walk is pleasant, with plenty of shade for most of the way. In the end we only collected two of the geocaches, as following the ridge line to the third was considered an exercise for another day. A very pleasant walk. A 4.2km walk with 169 meters of ascent.

Mount Tennent

Ok, so I want to do Mount Tennent from the “wrong” side (Apollo Road up the fire trail). The reason for this is that there is a series of 20 something geocaches along the route that I’d like to tick off as well as walking to Tennent.

I think the total route should be about 13kms, with about 800m of ascent. I propose we leave at least one car at the Apollo Road car park, and then drive the rest to the start point at the Namadgi visitor centre. We can then do the walk, and send one car back to collect the others while we wait under a tree (or something like that).

Naismith’s rule says this walk should take about 5 hours.

I’ve been meaning to do this one for ages, but finally got around to doing the walk with a few friends. We went up Tennent from the Namadgi visitor’s center, but walked back down on the far side of Tennent which seems less common. The far side is less scenic, but less steep as well I think. Along the way we collected 23 geocaches along the way, and a lovely walk was had by all.

Just over 1,000 meters vertically, and around 16km horizontally.

Mulligan’s flat

I went for a post lunch geocache walk in Mulligan’s flat this afternoon as I wind down towards the Christmas break. A good time was had, and a cool wool shed found. I really like this area, perfect for cub walks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A walk in the Orroral Valley

Last weekend was a walk in the Orroral Valley with a group of scout leaders. Embarrassingly, I’d never been in this area before, and its lovely — especially at the moment after all the rain we’ve had. Easy terrain, and a well marked path for this walk. The only catch is that there’s either a car shuffle involved, or you need to do a 12km return walk.

CBC Navigation Course

This was the GPS followup to the previous map and compass navigation exercise. A really nice walk, apart from crazy horse lady. The walk also included another visit to Forster trig. I’m not sure if its the time of year or the direction of approach, but this ascent was much nicer than my previous one, we seemed to avoid most of the prickly things. It would be interesting to recce the other side of the hill and see if I just got unlucky last time, or misread the contours.

Geocaching at the base of Mount Ainslie

I have a bit of a backlog of posts about recent walks which I am working through. Last week I found myself in Ainslie for an appointment which ended at lunch time, so I figured I’d go for a walk. There is a series of geocaches near Campbell Park West (a set of office buildings for non-Canberrans), so off I went.

The cache series was nice, but the most exciting part of the walking in this area was all the unexploded ordinance (UXO) warnings. I’m sure the area is totally safe, as many people walk through it each day, but it certainly adds an air of adventure to the walk.

You can find a list of the UXO reports for the ACT on the Department of Defence website, I must say that its not very impressive that the Department has contaminated so many sites around Australia without remediating them — there are heaps in New South Wales for example. The ACT gets off relatively lightly with only three contaminated sites.

Its also interesting to note that a suburb very close to me was used as a bombing practise range in World War Two. I’m not aware of anyone in my circle who knew that.

Anyway. Nice terrain, nice caches, lots of fun. I’d say this would be a good walk for cubs, but I am sure the risk management paperwork for a walk in a UXO are is complicated.

Lunchtime geocaching

So, I didn’t get to sleep last night until 4:30am because of a combination of work meetings and small children, so today was a pretty weird day for me. I was having a lot of trouble concentrating at lunch time, so I decided a walk was the least worst thing I could do with my time. I decided to knock off some of the few remaining geocaches in southern Tuggeranong that i haven’t found yet.

This walk was odd — it started and ended in a little bit of Theodore they never got around to actually building, and I can’t find any documentation online about why. It then proceeded through a nice little green strip that has more than its share of rubbish dumped, Cleanup Australia needs to do a visit here! Then there were the Aboriginal axe grinding grooves (read more) just kind of in the middle of the green strip with no informational signage or anything. Finally, a geocache at an abandoned look out, which would have been much nicer if it wasn’t being used as an unofficial dump now.

That said, a nice little walk, but I have no real desire to revisit this one any time soon.

Garran green strip

When I was a teenager my best mate lived in a house which backs onto this smallish reserve and we used to walk his dog here heaps. I had a few spare moments yesterday, so I was keen to do a quick explore and see what its like now. The short answer is that its still nice — good terrain, nice mature trees, and a few geocaches. I think this one would be a good walk for cubs.