Johnny Boy's Walkabout Blog

Wednesday 21 September 2022: Wednesday Walk E-M/M-H Isaacs Ridge and Mt Mugga Mugga Nature Reserves – M/E-M. For those of you looking forward to a walk this Wednesday please meet in Shepherdson Place, Isaacs at 8.30am.  We’ll combine a walk for the Easy/Medium/Hard walks but mostly at the lower end of the scale.  By the looks of the current weather forecast we should be able to get in a couple of hours of walking before the rain arrives. We’ll follow tracks, trails and potentially some short distances off track in the Isaacs and Mt Mugga Nature Reserves.  Have your morning tea and lunch with you even if we need to return to the cars before lunch time.  If the rain arrives early we’ll abandon the walk.

Summary

From Garmin Connect – Distance: 13.76km | Climb: 499m | Time: 3:32 moving + 1:26 of stops = 4:58 | Grading: M/E-M; M(9).

Photographs

Photographs are available here.

gpx File

The gpx file is available here.

Track Notes

I was last in the Isaacs Ridge and Mt Mugga Mugga NRs 4 days ago, on 17 Sep 22.

What? So why go back? Well, a walk is always a walk. This trip replaced the advertised/planned trip to Mt Domain and Snowy Corner, postponed because of the forecast rain.

What I learned on the walk is that I have a lot to reintroduce into my walks to make them more interesting (although, at the moment, my goal is to just walk in all of the 39 Canberra Nature Park Nature Reserves).

David W led a terrific walk, so well planned to use off-track legs where possible, instead of fire trails. He also has huge knowledge of historical things and places in the region.

We met in Shepherdson St Isaacs and walked SE to the southern end of The Spine track. Followed this N, then switched back to gain the top of the ridge for a while. We passed Sunday’s ‘tea party site’ and David reckoned it was CIT students practising with chainsaws that made the items. We weren’t on the fire trail for long and soon headed off-track for a great leg. A lot more pleasant walking.

Around about morning tea time we were shown a lovely stone circle.

David commented that he’s not even told Tim the Yowie Man about this construction, so I took the hint to remove the geotagging from the photo and doctor the track in the gpx file and track map. TYM has such a huge following that if the location was made known, it might be loved to death.

The off-track route continued to the north, out of the pine trees and into eucalypt and open spaces.

Our leader mentioned that there are four copses of trees near YA90 trig. We only saw two last Saturday.

What I was unable to provide for my companions last Saturday was a decent view of the Mugga Mugga quarry. We saw it from a distance today and it only got better.

Down off the northern end of the Isaacs Ridge, we followed a bit of the realigned CCT (not yet shown on the CCT website) and climbed to the quarry fence. Unlike me, we kept by the fence when it turned east and we reached the top of the quarry.

The fence is very close to the top of the quarry and, just through it, are the old boilers. David surmised that they were used to hold water, perhaps for dust suppression or fire fighting. I’d last seen them (unfenced) on 26 Feb 13. Indeed, back then, the whole area was unfenced and we were able to walk in the quarry and up some of the levels.

We retreated back a little and had lunch. The threatened rain had not yet arrived. A nice tree up there.

Time to head for home. A very pleasant loop north-ish and west-ish, then down to the flats to the SW.

We picked up the CCT/fire trail along the east side of Isaacs and returned to the start. Still no rain.

Track Map

Here’s where we went.

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

Party

15 walkers. Leader David W.