Our Gingra journey

Some pictures recording our epic day battling down Gingra Creek last weekend. Try to  ignore the smiling faces. They were just for the photos. It would be fun to make a short bushwalking documentary one day, of a gruelling bushwalk like this one. The video would be the happy, smiley shots like these. The sound track could be the actual expletives and profanities of the sad and sorry participants!

The decades old track notes for our Kanangra-Boyd bushwalk didn't give a true indication of the difficulty of the task. They made quite a lot of the old cedar-getters' track that could be followed part of the way. In practice the track was more trouble than it was worth. For the odd 50 metres it was worth following, but it always became hopelessly overgrown, or totally washed away. We scrambled up and down the hillside looking for negotiable options, and often settled for plodding along the creek bed itself. Wet, slippery, and sometimes impassable too.

The ten kilometres or so took pretty well the whole day. I for one was very ready to declare victory just before we reached that Kowmung River junction, and set up camp for the night, to rest my overworked and aching back and ankle muscles.

Once more unto the......... Kanangra-Boyd!

Four years ago I  had my first Kanangra-Boyd experience. I was there for three days, a mixture of leisurely day walks, convenient car-camping at Boyd River, and an extremely arduous day walk down to  the Kowmung River and back.

It was time to explore the area a bit further, so when some good bushwalking friends suggested a little Easter long weekend full-pack walk there, I was ready to join them.


I wasn't quite ready for the arduousness of the venture though. Maybe I'd just forgotten what these big adventures can be like. But gee it was a big one.

And a rewarding one too. That which doesn't kill you.....

Off we went, down past the Dance Floor Cave and up onto the Plateau. From there you look down several hundred metres below the cliffs of Kanangra Walls, to Kanangra Creek below and to the north. But we're headed east a few kilometres to Crafts Wall, and then sharp right, past the Pinnacles, and down a ridge to a hoped-for waterside campsite at Gingra Creek.

It's all a bit further than we'd expected though. It's about to get dark, so we camp high up in a flat spot on the ridge. Completely waterless, but beautifully remote and quiet and rather comfortable. We had emergency water supplies, and survived the night well.

The next day's walk was one of the most uncomfortable ones I can remember, though memory is rarely a good guide in these matters. We bashed our way down that Gingra Creek, and by hook or by crook, got to the other end, near its junction with the Kowmung, and magically found another idyllic private campsite, this time with water and all!

Day three was almost as bad. Foregoing even a glimpse of the sacred Kowmung River, we commenced a big long slog up a very long ridge, 900 metres of ascent plus a few hundred more because of all the extra downs and ups caused by 'Sixth Top', 'Fifth Top', 'Fourth Top', etc that you find yourself climbing over. With the 18kg full packs on our backs, it was calculated to be a Grade 5+ by our Club's grading system, as was the previous day's effort.

Nearly out now.

And here's the finish line.