Skip to main content

Adventure Time: Grand Canyon Loop & Lake Burragorang

Near Blackheath NSW
Time: 2 hours
Distance: 7km loop


This beautiful lush rainforest walk is well known and well publicised as one of the best attractions in the mountains.


We had a kid free weekend so Richie and I were able to enjoy this snowy(!) day in peace. This loop walk is jaw droppingly beautiful; prehistoric in its scale, and lush green everywhere you look.


There's so much information online about this walk that I'll just share some photos and skip all the details. Suffice to say there's a hell of a lot of stairs up and down, but the views are totally worth it.








On our way back down the mountains, we stopped for a moment to check out the walk to Lake Burrogorang lookout overlooking Warragamba Dam.

This walk is about 2.5km from the parking area at the end of Kings Tableland Rd.

It was absolutely freezing by this stage - we'd got warm walking around Blackheath then cooled down so I was well and truly frozen when we got out of the car again! But, it was a quickish walk (30 min or so) and I'd been wanting to check out this lookout for a while.


Technically called McMahons Lookout, there is a great view of the expanse that is the Kanangra Boyd national park and the wilderness beyond Lake Burragorang.



This important and wild place is in danger of being drowned, and inundated with silt and runoff if plans to raise the dam wall are given the green light.

Raising the dam wall will encourage massive over development on flood-prone areas in Penrith, Londonderry, Riverstone and Windsor. The NSW Government plans to house an additional 134,000 people on western Sydney floodplains after the dam wall is raised. Sydney's west is simply not equipped to deal with the knock on effects of hundreds of thousands of extra people and consequently the elimination of our natural flood safety nets, the low lying floodplain basins in the Hawkesbury and Penrith. They are there for a reason and perform their role of flood mitigation naturally and ethically. Some long-established homes are already subject to flooding, but to top it off, raising the dam wall by 14 metres is unlikely to actually prevent any flooding to all these shiny new homes crushed into the lowlands.

Read more about why this plan is so shitty at Give A Dam.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adventure Time: Burgess Falls and Oakland Falls

Near Hazelbrook NSW Distance: 3.4km Duration: ~2 hours Today we explored Burgess Falls and Oakland Falls in Hazelbrook, a beautiful, cool, relatively easy waterfall loop that is accessed from a grassy vacant lot on Winbourne Rd in Hazelbrook (can be accessed from the other end too). Burgess Falls in particular caught our eye as Burgess is Ty's middle name, after his grandfather. These and the neighboring Oakland Falls didn't disappoint; with small sandy 'beaches' they were a top spot to take a break along the way. The track itself meandered up and down through damp lush forest, crossing Hazelbrook creek and bringing us first to the top of Horseshoe Falls, where we carefully peered down over the rock platform to where the falls pooled below. Judging by the number of happy off-leash doggos we encountered this is a dog friendly bush walk; it doesn't appear to lie within national park boundaries. Two giant black labs were frolicking in one of the falls when w...

Adventure Time: Fortress Ridge Lookout and Dr Darks Cave

Near Blackheath, NSW Distance: 6.8km Duration: 2.5 hours Today we explored Fortress Lookout and the well-hidden Dr Dark's cave. Although the kids alternated between 'I hate life' and 'bush walking is awesome', they did great on this very steep and scrubby track! Heading along Mt Hay road we parked at a small parking area signposted as Fortress Ridge. Through a locked gate and up a steep rocky fire trail was Fortress Ridge Trail proper. At the end point of this track is a breathtaking vista, with the ground covered in scratchy low heath that slopes down gently -then all of a sudden you realise you're on the edge of a sheer drop, so don't let the kids run ahead on this bit! There are magnificent views down into the Grose valley and down to your left in the picture below you can see the (smallish) Medusa falls which I believe flow into Arethusa canyon. Backtracking from the lookout, keep your eyes peeled for the nondescript side trail to D...

Race Report: Glenbrook Marathon 2017

It was a tough day at the office today at Glenbrook marathon but as always Running Wild put on a wonderful friendly event! Thank you to all my beautiful friends for your hugs and high fives and support along the course, before, during and after. The community vibe is what makes these events so special. It was a cold, cold start at Euroka clearing early in the morning, but I knew it would warm up pretty fast, so I used my itchy but practical wool arm sleeves to keep warm while I was milling around the start line with Nicole, Jaime and a bunch of other local girls and guys. I knew this course like the back of my hand considering its within spitting distance of my house, but that didn't stop it feeling like a long slow trudge at times. The initial climb up the goat track out of Euroka is always a killer but I purposely slowed right down here and kept my heart rate as manageable as possible. It was perfect weather, not as hot as last year, and the parts I had found hard la...