Lorne to Erskine Falls to Cora Lynn Cascades loop 20-21/1/18
Posted: Sun 21 Jan, 2018 8:40 pmThe notes for this walk are in Walking the Otways from Chapman (with the Geelong Walking Club).
The walk is written as a day walk but at 20+ kms it's a bit long for me to enjoy so with a campsite roughly half way we made it an overnighter and had a great time. We left the car at the Allenvale Mill campground carpark, which was overflowing with campers and walkers cars and set off back down the road into the Lorne township. Having got that out the way we set off on the walk proper, following the Erskine River mostly quite closely up to Erskine falls. This was easy walking with several crossings all simply done with the summer water level. The main difficulty being numerous logs across the track to be scrambled over or, more often, crawled under. None needed us to take packs off though and progress was good. It was very enjoyable summer walking with lots of shade and surprisingly damp. We met a dozen or so groups coming down the track before reaching Erskine Falls and taking a break. Then it was up the stairs and onto Lemonade track and across to our camp for the night, the Cora Lynn campground. My phone gps had this day at 16kms. All the Parks info says the camp has two tent sites, and the one we used had a bollard marking it as "1", but we couldn't find the other so it was a bit of a mystery. The camp doesn't seem as though it gets much use and we had it to ourselves.
Day two we continued down the Cora Lynn cascades. Walking down the river is absolutely beautiful, in deep shade from tree ferns, every turn presents like a post card. This was rougher walking than the previous day with a lot of rock hoping and many river crossings a little trickier and slippy. It's as Otways as Otways can be and the 5 or so K's below the cascades were definitely the highlight. Typically none of my photos of this section worked out! We saw a lot less other walkers on this section than the day before. At the junction, Hendersons track was closed to the public as a construction site with utes from a civil works company coming and going so it wasn't possible to go past Allen Dam. There wasn't any indication of what they were doing up there. We were feeling the walk by this stage so it was no loss heading directly to Phantom Falls. The falls were completely dry but still an imposing sight. From there it was not much further back to the car at Allenvale, my gps logging just short of 11km for day 2.
You could easily extend this walk through The Canyon after Phantom Falls, if you had the fitness, which is another lovely spot in the area but that was enough for us and we set off for home a happy pair of beginners having had a great weekend out.
The walk is written as a day walk but at 20+ kms it's a bit long for me to enjoy so with a campsite roughly half way we made it an overnighter and had a great time. We left the car at the Allenvale Mill campground carpark, which was overflowing with campers and walkers cars and set off back down the road into the Lorne township. Having got that out the way we set off on the walk proper, following the Erskine River mostly quite closely up to Erskine falls. This was easy walking with several crossings all simply done with the summer water level. The main difficulty being numerous logs across the track to be scrambled over or, more often, crawled under. None needed us to take packs off though and progress was good. It was very enjoyable summer walking with lots of shade and surprisingly damp. We met a dozen or so groups coming down the track before reaching Erskine Falls and taking a break. Then it was up the stairs and onto Lemonade track and across to our camp for the night, the Cora Lynn campground. My phone gps had this day at 16kms. All the Parks info says the camp has two tent sites, and the one we used had a bollard marking it as "1", but we couldn't find the other so it was a bit of a mystery. The camp doesn't seem as though it gets much use and we had it to ourselves.
Day two we continued down the Cora Lynn cascades. Walking down the river is absolutely beautiful, in deep shade from tree ferns, every turn presents like a post card. This was rougher walking than the previous day with a lot of rock hoping and many river crossings a little trickier and slippy. It's as Otways as Otways can be and the 5 or so K's below the cascades were definitely the highlight. Typically none of my photos of this section worked out! We saw a lot less other walkers on this section than the day before. At the junction, Hendersons track was closed to the public as a construction site with utes from a civil works company coming and going so it wasn't possible to go past Allen Dam. There wasn't any indication of what they were doing up there. We were feeling the walk by this stage so it was no loss heading directly to Phantom Falls. The falls were completely dry but still an imposing sight. From there it was not much further back to the car at Allenvale, my gps logging just short of 11km for day 2.
You could easily extend this walk through The Canyon after Phantom Falls, if you had the fitness, which is another lovely spot in the area but that was enough for us and we set off for home a happy pair of beginners having had a great weekend out.