Caves to Coxs

[Allchin09]

Hey All,

Heading out this weekend to do the length of the Jenolan River downstream of the caves to where it enters the Coxs River. From there it's a bit of a walk (and bike ride!) back to the car. Hope to report back with photos Sunday evening, or monday depending on how late we get back.

Looking forward to finding out whether "Hellgate Gorge" lives up to its name!

Alex.

[kanangra]

It does. Good luck.

K.

[robertoman]

Can't wait to hear about it and see some photos.

[Allchin09]

Well, I did get out to the bush a few weekends ago so here is a part of the trip report, much overdue.

The plan was to walk from the Caves to the Coxs in a day (or as far as we could get before dark), some 20 or so km of creek walking, and then head up Cronje Mt and onto Black Range along the 6 Foot Track the following day to return to the car at Jenolan Caves. In order to reduce the amount of firetrail bashing on the Sunday and save a fair bit of time, we decided to leave push bikes out at the pluviometre on Black Range so that we could ride along the firetrail and then down the winding road to the Caves.

The adventure started late Friday night, driving up with Rich after I had finished Uni. I think it was around 11pm or so by the time we had found the correct turn off onto Black Range and driven the 8 km or so to where we planned to leave the bikes. I had been able to borrow my Dads 4wd which made the drive out easy. It would have been possible, but much slower to do it in a 2wd. We reached the pluviometre drove about 50m down a minor firetrail on the right, parking in front of a locked gate. We the donned head torches, removed the bikes from the bike rack and made some quick repairs to the handlebars or Richs bike before wheeling them into the bush so they were hidden from the firetrail. We then jumped back in the car, ready to drive down to Jenolan Caves to camp the night, but it was not to be.

I turned the key and all I heard was a clicking noise. I tried it again, and again only a loud clicking noise was heard and the engine still didn't kick over. I looked at the dashboard and it was full of warning lights, it wasn't looking good. We consulted the drivers handbook and all it said was to return the car immediately to the service centre, great. I jumped out of the car and noticed that the lights were on - flat battery it must be! A quick ring to Dad and he confirmed that a flat would be it, apparently the battery was on its way out so it wouldn't take long with the lights on to get into trouble. The situation looked pretty bad; we were on a dead end fire trail that gets hardly any used, the car was an auto so couldn't be jump started, we did have jumper lead but there were no cars near by and they may not even come by tomorrow. Even if we did track down a car, ours was facing the wrong way so jumping it would have been problematic. I decided to walk out to the main firetrail along Black Range where I erected a large cross over the road and a simple help sign with arrow pointing towards our car, just incase anyone came through during the night or early morning. As we weren't going anywhere that night, we decided to just roll out our sleeping bags, sleep, and deal with the issue in the morning. I was really annoyed with myself as it looked like we'd have to drastically change our plans for the weekend.

I awoke late and started to pack up. I was trying to work out how we would possibly handle the situation as I rolled up by sleeping bag. Rich had just started to wake up and I jumped in the car to put my stuff away. I then decided I had nothing to lose, and gave the ignition another go. Tick, tick, tick, VROOM! The car roared to life and I beeped the horn loudly in excitement! I was shocked that it had somehow managed to gain enough charge during the night to kick over. The walk was back on!

TBC.