by jonnosan » Mon 24 Jun, 2013 11:38 am
I did Faulconbridge to Blaxland yesterday, via Victory track, Lost World Lookout , St Helena Ridge track, stone stairs up to Ross Crescent.
I am a bit confused about the actual name of the ridge. According to my topo, St Helena Ridge is the one south of the ridge we walk down, yet St Helena Gully is north of that unnamed ridge. Anyway, the track along The Ridge Without A Name was reasonably easy to follow, a couple of points to note though.
1) Someone has marked the track on TRWAN down the slope to the creek with masking tape, in many places there were both cairns and masking tape, and the cairns seemed to show a different route to the tape, IMO the cairn route was better (e.g. a spot where the cairns marked an easy slot through a cliffline that looked impassible from a few metres away, the tape route did a zigzag route around the cliffline, on a slope that is likely to erode if subject to lots of traffic)
2) Someone (possibly the same person) has constructed some kind of fence across the track at a point on TRWAN about 100m before it starts dropping down steeply towards the creek. The "fence" was easily stepped over, but is quite long, going maybe 20m (? from memory) either side of the track, and consisted of a line of rocks on which trees have been placed. The trees looked to have been sawn, and from the burn marks, this was down AFTER the backburning i.e. quite recently. This would have taken quite a lot of effort, several hours at least. I couldn't see any purpose for this fence, and it doesn't seem to align with any property boundary (according to my topo, it is well inside the National Park). It reminded me a bit of a stone cross I found laid out in a clearing while bush bashing from Davies Ave down to the Victory Track (S33° 42.556' E150° 33.145' if anyone is interested). I.e. possibly the result of someone having a spiritual / psychotic episode in the bush.