View East from the shale knoll

Sunday 29 September 2024: Snowy Corner Cairn and the Shale Knoll ! – M/E-M. A slow hike up to the Snowy Corner cairn on the Tidbinbilla Range, a bit north, then south to the Shale Knoll.

Summary

From Garmin Connect (recorded on Epix Gen 2) – Distance: 7.58km | Climb: 620vm | Time: 2:08 moving + 2:16 of stops = 4:24 | Grading: M/E-M; M(10).

Photographs

View photographs here.

gpx file

Download the gpx file here.

Track Maps

Here’s where I went.

Track Snowy Corner and the Shale Knoll

Track N from Snowy Corner cairn

Track S and E from Snowy Corner cairn

Trip Report

With a spare day I decided to reward myself with another solo walk. I was last here on 1 Apr 23.

Walking at 9.25am. Always lovely crossing the bridges over Mountain Creek and feeders.

View downstream from Mountain Creek trails bridge 5

I am truly old and sick and slow. The slowest trip I’ve ever done from Mountain Creek car park to the Snowy Corner cairn on the crest of the Tidbinbilla Range. 1hr 45mins for the 2.7km climb of 530vm. Lost count of the number of exhaustion stops.

Snowy Corner cairn

Options, so I first headed north a bit.

Heading N along the crest

Turned around at the first open space, as I’ll be through here to the Pimple next month.

Turn around at the open area

Back through Snowy Corner I headed south.

Heading S from Snowy Corner cairn

The developing footpad a little harder to follow at first, as the ground is rocky. I decided to waypoint the tapes. Could be useful if one ends up up here in the snow or cloud.

A cairn feature looked too much like a rock stack to me, so I modified it. Apologies if it has real meaning.

Before and after

A nice descent from SH1431.

Heading down S from SH1431

There’s a dip with views.

View to TNR and Canberra from the dip before the shale knoll

Then a climb up the shale knoll to views to the next higher knoll.

Higher knoll S of the shale knoll

Breezy views to Ginini Falls.

Ginini Falls from the shale knoll

And, of course, the mighty view east.

View East from the shale knoll

12 noon, so time to head for home.

A brief munch at the Snowy Corner cairn. I don’t often stop (except to breathe) when walking solo.

I do enjoy this country!

Party

Just moi.

AllTrails

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

Johnny Boy’s Walkabout Blog FaceBook Page

I’ve started up a FaceBook page. Each trip report posts to it. It’s another way to get some info to get out and breathe a bit of fresh air. Why not pop over and Follow the page, or give a post a Like.

Additional Trip Reports

As I age, I’m doing a few more simple hikes. I don’t always produce a full trip report. If you’re interested, you can find details of them on the Completed Walks tab. There you can access the trip’s map segment, download a gpx file, see the distance, climb and grading, and link through to the photo album. Additional metrics are available by looking at the start waypoint on the map segment – moving time, stopped time, total time.