Little River Gorge November

[lfrisken]

Hi All, just thought I'd share a little trip I went on in November last year to Little River Gorge with three friends. In for a second time, definitely my all-time favourite adventure trip in Victoria. It's a bit technical in sections. so you want to be fairly confident with your skills before heading in there I guess, a long way from help. I love the make your own adventure potential and it's just got such a remote, massive and peaceful atmosphere there. The campfires from last time had been washed away, we didn't see any rubbish, so you could even imagine you were the first people there, we tried to take care to leave it that way, because it's a special feeling.

edit: oops, wrong section of the forum, mod please move?

There's a bit of a write up, and a download for an A3 and A4 map that I made of the area using data from the Victorian Government and OpenStreetMap on my blog: http://lukefrisken.com/adventures/little-river-gorge.html

screenshot of A3 Map

tarp camping just before the first abseil

great views down the gorge

some climbing

a snake

climbing out of the gorge

[highercountry]

I walked up the Gorge from the Snowy junction in 2002.
The hardest walk I've ever done. Without a doubt.
I'm not a rock climber but we had basic absailing gear. How basic? A length of rope, and nothing else.
From memory it took us 2 nights and close to three full days to walk, clamper, stumble, jump, swim, climb and sweat our way up the 16 odd kilometres (distance is from memory, but about that), to the road at the top.
Breathtakingly spectacular scenery, with a really ancient feel, especially in the deepest section.
A dinosaur wouldn't have looked out of place down there, nor surprised me I was so knackered at times.
I'll never forget it.

ps. a snakebite from a brown in there would be a really, really serious situation. No mobile reception and In the very deep and narrow sections I reckon satellite communication from a PLB would be unlikely, not to mention the impossibility of getting a chopper into those parts.

[neilmny]

Great work Luke. Your maps are well done too. Thanks for positng............and yep the Brown Snake is definitely one to avoid getting into an argument about who has right of way with.

[neilmny]

Drat double post

[andrewp]

There's a bit of a write up, and a download for an A3 and A4 map that I made of the area using data from the Victorian Government and OpenStreetMap

A bit off topic, but I'm very interested in how you made the maps. I'm a bit familiar with QGIS and I am wondering what data source(s) you used.
I have tried:

http://services.land.vic.gov.au/catalogue/publicproxy/guest/dv_geoserver/wms?VERSION=1.1.1&SRS=EPSG:4283&BBOX=143.186,-37.332,143.298,-37.275

but am not particularly happy with the results. Maybe I'm not picking the best layers.

[lfrisken]

There's a bit of a write up, and a download for an A3 and A4 map that I made of the area using data from the Victorian Government and OpenStreetMap

A bit off topic, but I'm very interested in how you made the maps. I'm a bit familiar with QGIS and I am wondering what data source(s) you used.
I have tried:

http://services.land.vic.gov.au/catalogue/publicproxy/guest/dv_geoserver/wms?VERSION=1.1.1&SRS=EPSG:4283&BBOX=143.186,-37.332,143.298,-37.275

but am not particularly happy with the results. Maybe I'm not picking the best layers.

Hey Andrew,

it's a bit of a process, and I'm still trying to refine it/simplify it and write it all down to share. I promise to post it here when I manage to do that.
I've been downloading the Victorian data from http://services.land.vic.gov.au/SpatialDatamart/index.jsp which also provides an interface to preview the layers I think, or maybe that was the tasmanian one, I forget now. Anyway, next map I make I'll document the process and put it online.

[lfrisken]

@highercountry

yes bottom to top is next on my list of things to do there, sounds like a great challenge! (that and making an attempt on the Grand Old Duke, or a number of other potential interesting rock lines).

@neilmny
Only found out it was a brown snake afterwards, it came swimming towards us across a large pool, so had plenty of time (this time) to move out of the way, but you're right, not a good combination!

[andrewp]

it's a bit of a process, and I'm still trying to refine it/simplify it and write it all down to share. I promise to post it here when I manage to do that.
I've been downloading the Victorian data from http://services.land.vic.gov.au/Spatial ... /index.jsp which also provides an interface to preview the layers I think, or maybe that was the tasmanian one, I forget now. Anyway, next map I make I'll document the process and put it online.

Thanks. Ah it seems you are downloading shape files or similar. I thought you were getting the data from a web service like WMS. I have downloaded from Spatial Datamart before for the whole state to make maps for my Garmin gps. I look forward to seeing your process documentation. I'm always looking for new/better ways to get up to date maps. I'm interested in how you get QGIS to print the eastings and northings.