Johnny Boy's Walkabout Blog

Saturday 6 June 2026: Trigs and Nature Reserves #6 – Hardy and Cotter trigs * – M/R. This hike begins at the gate on Pipeline Rd in the Pierces Creek Pine Forest area. We walk up an old fire trail to bag Hardy trig. Next is a nearly 2km leg along the crest of the Hardy Range on a deteriorating fire trail. From here, things get tricky. The next 2km is off-track through the scrub on the crest, before we turn NW and descend to Cotter trig (always interesting when you descend to a trig, 100vm descent over 1km). Finally, a 200vm plunge over 500m to pop out on Pipeline Rd. The hike is then all over bar the shouting, as from here it’s a road bash of 7km twisting and turning above the Cotter River and the gravity feed pipeline from Bendora Dam to your tap. The culverts directing water off the range are amazing, but once you’ve seen one or two there are several more to pass. Around 13km and 600+vm climb. Best suited for off-track walkers. A few geocaches for you to find for me.

Are you a list ticker? I am! Our Parks and Conservation Service list 66 trigs on public land in the ACT and 39 Nature Reserves in the Canberra Nature Park. Most are quite easily accessed. Over the next several months I will plan and lead a number of trips to these locations for our mutual list ticking enjoyment. I’ll even keep our records. Handsomely illuminated (digital) certificates will be issued at the end of the series 😂.

Summary

From Garmin Connect (recorded on Garmin H1i+ handheld) – Distance: 13.0km | Climb: 675vm | Time: 3:50 moving + 2:43 of stops = 6:33 | Grading: M/R; M(11).

Photographs

View photographs here. There’s a few more photos in the album that are not in the Trip Report, including along the Hardy Range crest, the descent to Cotter trig, the steep decent to Pipeline Rd and, for your viewing pleasure, many culverts.

gpx file

Download the gpx file here.

Track Map

Here’s where we went:

 

Trip Report

I was last along here on  2 Oct 22 (including Pierces Creek Falls) and 1 Jul 17.

2 trigs, no NRs or geocaches today.

Foggy as we left Canberra. A great view from the park at the locked gate on Pipeline Rd to the lower fog.

A quick briefing and we were away.

Apuff up the fire trail and a bit of a route towards Hardy Hill.

 

The Hardy trig is looking worse for wear, but a bag is a bad. Not much of a view.

Back down at the junction, we continued south on the fire trail for around 1.5km.

It came to an abrupt end.

The first few tens of metres is a bit of a shock, but the going soon gets easier.

Smoko was called at 10.30am. To our joy, dingoes howled in the distance. It’s been a few years since I’ve heard them.

We continued south along the crest for another 1.5km leg, taking 1 hour. Relatively easy, slow going. A couple of little rocky knolls.

At 11.45am we took a turn to the NW down a spur towards Cotter trig.

Again, relatively open going for the 900m descent in 35 minutes.

It’s not that impressive, is it? But a bag is a bag. We took luncheon.

We left at 12.50pm.

It’s only around 500m across the ground down to Pipeline Rd, but the drop is 220vm. That’s steep, so we took our time and were rewarded with no falls. 45 minutes for the descent.

It was all over bar the shouting … except for a 7km road bash back up Pipeline Rd. That took us 1 hour 40mins. I amused myself by taking photos of all the culverts (in the pics, for your enjoyment). The best one is

Thanks, friends, for holding my hand. Trust you enjoyed it.

The AllTrails map is here, where you can pan and zoom.

Party

8 walkers – Evelyn C and Greg F, Immi F, Kirsty G, Nicole H, Charity M, Cameron S, me.