Despite posts on this blog that might lead you to think otherwise, the shopping trip was actually for Meg’s birthday present – which ended up being an  Osprey 55L hiking pack. It’s a bit on the small size, but we decided Meg shouldn’t really be carrying much more than that anyway – I’ll just have to take the slack in my 90L behemoth. It’s a really nice little pack, I have a serious case of pack-envy.

So on Sunday we wanted to give it a run and headed out for a hike. The plan was to walk from the Cotter to Kambah Pool, or perhaps not all the way, and then back. Unfortunately those clowns at Actew are rebuilding the pumping station at the Cotter and have dug up & mucked up the track at that end. We ignored a few signs saying the track was closed and wandered around trying to find the start of the track, but after nearly falling in a few holes and generally mucking up the place we decided to give it up.

Plan B was to hike up Gibraltar Peak from Tidbinbilla, but being a grade A tightwad I balked at the $10/car entry fee and we drove to the Corin side and walked in from there. I don’t mind paying to go into Tidbinbilla for a day, but it was 1pm by the time we got there and the only facilities we were planning to use was the carpark – rip off 🙂

I forgot my camera so I didn’t get any good shots, just a few quickies with the camera phone. There’s a really cool rock formation about half way up the track, we decided it was called Mushroom Rock – not very original. It looks like you could easily climb up to under the mushroom, but getting on top of that would be a serious feat.

Had a bit of lunch on top of the peak and watched some climbers scramble around down below the knife-edge boulder, not sure what they were climbing on. It was fairly pleasant in the sun, but the icy wind eventually forced us back down the mountain.

We decided to take a different route on the way down, but ended up picking the wrong track and just did a giant loop, via some insane ruts and divets. The roads around there are just getting crazy with the erosion, but we still saw some trail bikes and a few kids in a Nissan Patrol getting through without much trouble. It’s amazing what you can get a 4WD through if you just take it off the bitumen.