We have a lot of nature loving dudes around here - If you are wanting to go out for an overnighter, a day hike and general adventuring in the surrounding areas of CBR - Here is where you organise it all.
I will start then.
Wife and I headed out past Corin forest on Sunday at midday to head out to Square Rock. Highly recommend - especially this time of year as you will come across a bit of snow along the way.
Link for the hike here: http://www.tams.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/404603/Square_Rock_Walking_Track_Brochure.pdf
My pics from the hike here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjZSxC7A
I think I’m heading up Tennent via the Scar on Friday. Still not quite sure where to start/enter the hike and where to park but should be good scrambling in preparation for the Castle (Budawangs) next weekend.
Just registered, see you over there Blakey!
I may be doing Mt Tennant this weekend with the wife - anyone want to join? I went out to Booroomba Rocks on Monday afternoon. Highly recommend the short hike up, you look over the whole Canberra valley and on a clear day you can see layers and layers of mountains.
Also - Thinking a good overnighter would be Honeysuckle Creek Campground. Pretty good facilities, but Apollo road is quite a climb. Or even Orrorral valley campground - a bit of a climb in over Fitz.
Climb to Honeysuckle Creek Campground - Honeysuckle Creek | Strava Ride Segment in Booth, ACT, Australia
Yep, decent but do-able climbs with pretty good camp facilities.
Anyone know any good swimming holes near Canberra/Namadgi. It’s 28 degrees on Monday and Jo and I will probably go out camping sunday night and swim the next day.
What day are you thinking of doing Tennant?
I’ve camped at Orroral with Jo before and it’s pretty nice. You can access a couple nice, short hikes a shortish drive from there.
Ahhhhh! It all sounds super! The title of this thread sounds a lot like a trip to ‘the beach’ on the 'bidge near your place Ezy 
I hear you on orroral/honeysuckle/tennent awesomeness, and yes, it is in range for widweek overnighter. Keen to hear if anyone else is up for it. Fargo is dialled and itching for long range mission.
This weekend is start of bright 4 peaks training, so tennent could be on the cards! Might see you out there mate. Anything under an hour up is fast, under 50mins and you are in FINE company
I picked up a rad canvas tent yesterday, will be hitting BCF this week to get apppropriately heavy and old-school guy lines and pegs for it. Such a beast… I thought I was going to be proper trapped in it when trying to hold it up from inside solo last night.
Aeons, did you go up the scar? Best access is jsut follow the creek, as in walk in the creek, from the road at the start of the AAWT. Such a good time up there.
Mountain creek? 
Close to Canberra southside are Point Hut, Pine Island and Kambah Pools.
Near Cotter are Casuarina Sands et al.
Sturt Island near Uriarra is a nice spot too. It’s bit of a hike from there up to Shepherds Lookout
Not sure about in Namadgi besides the dams, but any of the creeks will be fine for a dip
PS I enjoy your nature photos a lot, Bigadz
I never did it, with some convincing maybe I’ll get it done this Sunday and then go camp at orroral afterwards, I remembered there is a nice little creek there you can sit in.
The pictures of the tent look rad. I’d love something like that for car camping!
There is a creek at Orroral. I walked along it on Monday until I saw a massive red belly black snake.
Another spot I like is Woods Reserve, there is a creek there and if you follow it up a bit there is a pretty cool rock pool that you can just sit in and have the water flow over you. It is very chilly though.
All this talk of camping has inspired me to take the family out this weekend for an overnighter, probably at Corin. Will ride out there and do a few reps.
Thanks mate
As you know, I headed up to Mt Tennent yesterday. It was a good day for it - but after a long (for me) ride with JP the day before, the legs weren’t too fresh.
I always grab a walking stick within the first few minutes of a walk. Good for my knee and also good for magpies, snakes, bunyips etc.
A few spring flowers out and about
The view from half way up
One of the benefits for looking down on the trail whilst hurting. Spotted this heart shaped rock. I thought it was pretty cool.
The view from the top. I sort of bonked on the way up - started getting shitty vision and shaking a bit. We only had one bag which was packed with a lot of water and food which was pretty heavy. The quads felt it on the way up and my pace dropped off - I walked the last bit at a slow shuffle and was too stubborn to hand the bag over to the wife. I eventually broke down with 80 metres to go, had to take the shirt off. It was drenched.
The coffee that never was. Just as the water had boiled - a massive gust of wind blew over my aeropress. Given my mood - a tantrum was had.
After a bit of a nap and feed up the top I was back to normal. But I had to hand the backpack over to the girl. Legs were gone. She is my hero.
This sort of bushland is my favourite. The colours of the trees, the grass clumps, the smell of nature - its all good. I love it.
They may not be as impressive as the redwoods, but walking through these trees makes you feel pretty small.
This vine had a tight grip around the tree - it spiralled all the way up to the top of the tree with those nice purple flowers.
Yellow path
Legs are gone. Photo doesn’t show it too well, that that was a cool little coffee table that the rangers had made out of a granite slab.
Standing proud with my stick and PBR hat.
The hero of the day.
Nice pics! Spewed in my mouth a little bit when I saw that love heart rock, though.
What a day it was :)I wish I had some nature pics to show, too.
Excellent report Ezy! Mount Tennent has been on my list for a while, I’ve just been a bit unsure whether my boys could cope with it.
Two weekends ago I did a really cool but hard hike. We went to the Bungonia gorge, which is about 20 ks east of Goulburn. It was organised by a mate and I paid basically no attention to the sort of hike that would be. We were in for quite an adventure, what with a total of 7 kids from ages 2 - 12 and 1 or 2 inexperienced adult walkers. Because I’m a lazy ass (and was carrying a fair bit of weight) I didn’t take any photos but I included a few I googled (thanks bloggers!)
The walk is basically a loop in three parts: first you walk down to the bottom of the gorge, then follow a river along the length of the gorge, then walk up once the gorge is finished. The final walk up is quite a slog, especially in the sun. It took us about 2h and it’s straight uphill.
The 1st part of the loop is a pretty steep descent. It follows a creek which feeds into the river that runs through the gorge. The upper part of the descent is full of these xanthorrhoeas which are my new favourite Aussie tree. The final part is really cool as there’s some climbing down to be done. Obviously we took a lot of care as a fall would be a big bummer. Here is what the upper part of the descent looks like, and you can see a couple xanthorrhoeas (looks like some big green fireworks):
Once you get to the bottom, you enter the gorge. It’s beautiful and you can have a dip in various rockpools. We saw a tortoise in one of those which was pretty cool. The bottom of the gorge:
Then the gorge becomes full of huge boulders and there’s no more path, so you find your way climbing up and down the rocks. Again really cool, but we had some interesting moments keeping control of the kids who just wanted to get into any hole they could find. That part is pretty hard because it’s long and involves walking, jumping, climbing up and down and crawling in holes. Very cool though. We saw a couple rockclimbers and climbing routes along the walls of the gorge, it looks like a really cool place for it. The boulders:
The whole thing took us over 6 hours, which was not exactly what I had in mind at the start. All in all it was absolutely magnificent, and so different from all the walks I’ve done around Canberra. I would highly recommend, and will be back for sure - just with less kids and a camera!
Ohhh. This kind of hike appeals to me! I love me a good canyon. With the scrambling bit, how technical is it? I am like a spider monkey, but the wife is more like bambi on ice.
It’s not technical. No ropes or real climbing moves involved, you just have to use the hands in some places, especially at the end of the descent, inside the gorge. It’s definitively a challenging but rewarding walk. You’ll see a very somber sign at the start that tries to do everything to dissuade walkers to do the hike, it’s almost like you go to a certain death if you pass the sign. Don’t let it go to your head, my 6 years old Paco did the walk like a boss so it’s very doable (and very fun).
We did the red track on the map: http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/~/media/visitor/files/PDF/Brochures/bungonia-pdf.aspx