Johnny Boy's Walkabout Blog

Saturday 23 March 2024: Gigerline Nature Reserve * – M/M. From the Angle Crossing Road, we enter the Gigerline Nature Reserve on the Eastern side of the Murrumbidgee. We walk along a fire trail for a few hundred metres before turning north off track through open woodland up and over a prominent hill with good views. We continue to Guises Creek for morning tea. We will not walk along Guises creek but will head cross country to the Murrumbidgee River. To return we head off track up a steep spur, then continue until we reach a suitable lunch spot. After lunch we have a short walk back to the cars.\

Summary

From Garmin Connect (recorded on MAP66i) – Distance: 9.19km | Climb: 365vm (Elev Corrections Enabled) | Time: 2:40 moving +1:29 of stops = 4:09 | Grading: M/E-M; M(8).

Photographs

View photographs here.

gpx file

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Track Map

Here’s where we went. This is a ©2003 map.

Trip Report

This trip was planned by Phillip S. An excellent ramble route through a variety of easy going (apart from the uphills for me). Once participants found out that I was leading it, many dropped out!

I was last in the area on 4 Aug 09. That day we came in from the N up the Murrumbidgee via Gigerline Hill, up the true right of Guises Creek through the gorge for a bit, then exited via Rose trig (now on leasehold land) and Mt Rob Roy.

We drove down the Monaro Highway to Williamsdale, right onto Angle Crossing Road and past the entrance to the Gigerline Nature Reserve to a verge parking area which had been carefully chosen by Phillip.

Walking by 9.35am, we walked back up the road and through the gate into the Nature Reserve. After a couple of hundred meters on an old vehicle track, we struck off north through open woodland, accompanied by the buzz of two helicopters involved in a large (training?) SES exercise down just off the Monaro Highway.

As the map shows, down through and up from a gully, then East and North turns along the NR boundary (whoops, did we stray into private property to get a better attack on the hill?).

Some great specimen trees.

The hill did indeed provide views across the rolling country around us.

We continued North across another gully, crossed the Lobbs Hole Track (so named on my Garmin/OSM maps) and down to near the edge of Guises Creek. We chose to stop for morning tea above the near impenetrable scrub guarding the bank of the creek.

Back up on the track, we followed it West, past some old machinery.

There were a couple of additional piles of metal as we continued. Talk of gold prospecting? Does anyone know?

The track zig-zagged down to a broad reach of the Murrumbidgee River.

A nearby derelict building.

We left the river via a steady climb East and South-East back to the hilltop views knoll, then down to a corner of the Nature Reserve.

I had a couple of extra bits up my sleeve and we took a short detour along an open ridge. Where it started to drop down towards the river, we found a nice lunch spot.

Rising from the luncheon venue at 1.15pm, I omitted the second detour to achieve the promised 3pm back in town time. One walker needed to be home at a reasonable hour to go out raging that evening. So it was South back to our vehicles.

A very pleasant ramble across light going country. Thanks for planning it Phillip. Thanks all for coming.

Party

11 walkers – Rochelle C, Michael C, Lesley H, Kirk H, Anna H, Johannes K, Leila J, Alan L, Hsu L, Nathan L, me.

AllTrails

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

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