Mt Mavis and the bowl down to Rendezvous Creek flats from the Wall of Tors (Mav 022)
Tuesday 18 March: Rocky Outcrops Eastern Flank of Mavis Ridge – L/R,ptX. From the Nursery Swamp carpark we will follow tracks for 90 minutes to Rendezvous Creek. Most of the day will then be off-track. We will follow a meandering route south along the side of Mavis Ridge, climbing to about 1500 metres (GR733486) and investigating a few large granite outcrops hidden in the alpine ash & mountain gum forests. We then return to Rendezvous Creek via a different route and follow the tracks back to the cars. Note: This is a long and very hard walk with some rock scrambles and possibly six hours of walking through scrub. Map: Rendezvous Creek. Leader: Ian W. Transport: approx $37 per car. Limit: 8.
5 of us drove from Canberra to the Nursery Swamp car park.
Summary
Distance: 19.3km | Climb: 1200m | Time: 7.55am-4.45pm (8hrs 50mins), with 45 mins of breaks | Grading: L/R; VH(15)
Track Maps
Track overview
Track 1
Track 2
Photographs
Photographs are available, where you can start a large sized slide show.
Video
Google Earth
Download the Google Earth .kmz file here.
Track Notes
2.4km in 40mins from the Nursery Swamp car park to the turnoff past the bridge (Rob H turnoff). 280m across the light timber and final belt of shrubs to the start of the footpad.
Lost the Rendezvous Creek footpad badly at the beginning, after the first blue paint daub on the edge of the open. The shrubs are closing in on this first section. The trick (seen on our return) is to force through and immediately there is a new pink tape. I lost it again about half way along. Our inward and outward tracks are quite different in places, as you can see from the track map. Peter certainly did a better job leading the return. There seem to be many more blue paint daubs since I was last here, including some arrows. These are great as they last longer than tapes, although they are hard to see in the wet. Perhaps we should call this the ‘blue daub’ track. I tried to record waypoints at several of them so I can be a navigation hero next time, but we were moving too quickly for the GPSr to settle at each point, so the waypoints are a little off the recorded track. 50mins for the 2.6km to the Rendezvous Creek fireplace.
What followed was an excellent, tough, circumnavigation off the bowl leading up to the saddle between Mt Mavis and Mt Herlt. We climbed from 1090m at the fireplace to 1530m at the highest. After the initial light scrub, the going got tight on the NE facing slope of the inward leg. Lovely to see running water in one of the feeder creeks we crossed and treee ferns at 1280m. The going was relatively a little easier on the homeward leg, the ground being a little dryer on the more W facing slope. Some steep boulder scrambling below Eagle Rocks.
Ian had certainly found some granite for us! The two main features, named by him ‘Wall of Tors’ and ‘Eagle Rocks’ are massive areas of boulders and tors clearly visible on the flank of the Mavis ridge as we descended to Rendezvous Creek. Ian had pointed them out and we trembled.
As well, there were other bonus bits of granite to oggle. I’ll let the photos and videos do the talking. Can you spot the oval shape on the side of the tor which Eric pointed out looked like a Dinosaur egg?
‘Eagle Rocks’ was so named because a wedge-tailed eagle took off from very nearby as we were about to leave. We’d previously visited this feature on 3 Jul 12, and were able to spend some time today exploring around.
Down at the N end of the creek flats, we discovered a couple of new large sleepers across the creek where I’d previously marked an old bridge site. Maybe for a quad bike. Another set of sleepers across the creek just S of the fireplace. And the old vehicle track has recently been cleared, so an easy walk back.
Picked up a little more water at Rendezvous Creek, then back.
Party
5 walkers – Mark B, Peter C, Eric G, Ian W (leader), me.