Blue Breaks Walk

The Blue Breaks is part of the Southern Blue Mountains wilderness contained between the Coxs and Wollondilly arms of lake Burragorang. It is a great area for bushwalking. It offers a sense of remoteness and it is rugged. To walk there requires careful navigation and route finding.  It is also a very spectacular place.

On the Mittagong to Katoomba walk back in July, I had been hoping to go via the Blue Breaks – but we encountered very windy weather. Not a good time to be scrambling on the tops! This past week was my next opportunity – and together with Tim and Peter from SUBW, we completed a very nice walk. We had hoped to traverse both Bimlow Tableland and Broken Rock Range – but bad weather limited us to a visit of the latter. But this allowed us to spend a longer time on the beautiful Kowmung River.

Our route was from Kanangra Walls, along part of Gingra Range and then down Roots Ridge to the Kowmung River.

After crossing the river, we climbed up onto Scotts Main Range and then descended to Butchers Creek to camp. Not a bad first day. It was very disappointing to find a lot of damage to the banks of the creek caused by foraging feral pigs. We encountered a lot of rain overnight and it seemed to have set in. This was a little ironic! Butchers Creek was almost totally dry. We had been lucky to find a small pool of water along a kilometre section the day before.

With the rain, we changed plans and climbed back onto Scotts Main Range and road bashed to the shelter offered by the Catholic Bushies Huts at New Yards. One of the huts is unlocked, and passing bushwalkers can use it in spells of bad weather. After a very wet day – the next morning dawned fine, so we set off for the northern end of Broken Rock Range. Broken Rock is a great place with commanding views over a large part of the Southern Blue Mountains. The top is scrubby and walking is not fast. Some route finding is required to negotiate small cliffs but the views more than compensated for this.

We camped part way along right on the rim and enjoyed a vey calm night. We completed the traverse the next morning and then descended again to Butchers Creek. Once again, we found the creek dry but were lucky to find a good pool of water in a rocky section a short way downstream.

Most of our second last day was spent walking up the Kowmung River between Gingra Creek junction and Hughes Ridge. This is very pleasant and for the most part easy walking. The rain had returned by this time – but it was quite light during the day.

Our last camp was spent at Ferny Flat – and it rained a lot overnight. Next morning we got an early start and walked back to Kanangra Walls to arrive back at the car around noon.

It was a very pleasant walk. Thanks to Tim and Peter for the company.

More photos here.