motorbike tracks around gooches crater

[davidm]

A group of us went into Gooches Crater over the weekend.

The damage done by bike riders round there is crazy. There were tracks everywhere causing significant erosion in many spots. It's particularly upsetting because the area is still recovering from the fires a few years back.

Unfortunately I also made the stupid assumption that one of them was the track marked on the map that we were meant to head down off the fire trail, even though I thought we still had another KM or so to go, and it wasn't right on top of the ridge as marked. It was just too well defined to ignore, and at that stage I hadn't realised they were motorbike tracks. As a result, we descended 2 ridges too early and missed the crater. I then made another stupid decision to cut across what looked like an easy valley, hoping we were just one ridge too early, which turned out to be impenetrable. Ended up taking 3 hours of fighting scrub to get back up to the fire trail and to find the correct track. Heading back up the ridge we crossed at least 2 more motorbike tracks as well.

Is this something that should be reported to the national parks?

[tom_brennan]

Only if the tracks are in the NP. Most of the area just north of Goochs Crater (no "e" ) is in State Forest, unless the boundaries have recently been moved. So you could report to Forestry NSW, but they probably won't care that much.