[SUBW-A] Late Trip report - Porter Pass, Blackheath. July 7th.

[wendy wing yee au]

Sorry for this very late trip report. I've been (and still am) very busy 
recently with work and stuff. I really shouldn't leave this for too long 
before I forget.

So on July 7th, a freezing Sunday morning, Katherine, Alla, Andrew, 
Warrick?, Albert and I met at Blackheath Station and then drove to the end 
of Bundarra Street, where the walk started. We walked down to Fortress 
Rocks, the view gradually opens up as we go. We had a short photo break on 
the top of Fortress Rock, where we had an excellent view of the Kanimbla 
Valley. We then headed north-east back to the suburban streets, and went 
passed a team of enviroment management workers? practicing logging at a 
primary school. With my below-the-average navigation skill, I got a bit 
confused by the streets and had to rely on my walk assistant, that's Albert 
of course, for direction. So we walked down to Porter Pass, where the area 
became more like a rainforest. We had a small problem here finding the way 
and ended up with mud all over our pants and shoes. The cliff face along 
Colliers Causeway is very spectacular, and there were occasional showers 
from the hanging swamps above. We came to the base of a waterfall where the 
track diverged. The tracks in this section are very confusing and do not 
correlate with the topomap. We mistakenly turned right at the junction, 
thought it would lead us to the Walls Ledge circuit. However, the track 
disappeared gradually into really thick scrub. So we decided to turn back 
and had lunch on a rock platform by the waterfall. The wind was blasting and 
it was freezing there. After a short lunch break, we walked back up towards 
the ridge, and again came to another junction. After consulting the topomap 
for a while, we had finally worked out where the hell we were - this is 
where we should turn right to Walls Ledge. The loop is only a five minute 
walk, much smaller than what it looks like on the map. We then returned to 
the car via Fortress Rock.

The walk finished at 2:30pm, which I thought is too early to go home. So we 
drove down Megalong Valley road to a short walking track on the left (which 
I forgot the name). This little walk only took us about 20 minutes, it was 
nice and relaxing. The rainforest environment here is a very different 
landscape from the first walk.

We all had a great time in this trip, and thank you all for coming.
Hope to see u again in the upcoming walks.

Wendy



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