Dave’s Track

Working Bee  17/1/2016

Seven of us meet on a damp and drizzly morning wondering what we were doing having a working bee on a day like that, but the weather man on the computer told me there would not be any rain at Trotters Gorge. So off we headed south for the Trotters Gorge Reserve car park. However as we drove through Alma it was still bucketing down, but computer weather man had said it would be fine and low and behold when we got to Herbert the drizzle cleared to high cloud and it was quite dry.

Arriving at the car park we were meet by two others which made our numbers up to nine, a good turnout for a working bee. We headed off up the track past the University Hut to the junction in the track. Then we took the track to the right over Trotters creek where there was once the creek bed but is now covered in gorse and up to the start of Dave’s Track under Ahns Peak.

Dave’s track is named after Dave Sinclair, a member of our club, who planned many years ago to explore a track up this wee scrubby lime stone valley, but sadly he passed away at a young age before he achieved it. So some of our club members back then explored the valley and marked a track that the club and hunters have used many times over the years.

We started by opening the entrance of the track and found that someone else had cleared a bit of a new track up onton  the low terrace. From there we dropped down over a creek and worked our way up the valley. In most places the track was easy to find with a bit of clearing here and there of bush and gorse, but there was a couple of places where we had to work out where the track went.

We were soon up to the stone cliff the splits the valley. From here the track follows the cliff base to the left for a few 100 metres and then drops down though some honey suckle which was a bit of a mess to clean up. Then it is a short steep climb onto the cliff tops. Some steps were cut here.

We achieved all this in three and a half hours, marking the route with pink ribbons, so it was nice having lunch on top looking back down the valley.

After lunch it was a short walk with a bit of gorse cutting out to the forestry road where we had a wee reopening and cutting of the ribbon ceremony. After all the work in the morning it was nice to have a walk up the road and onto South Peak for the great views of the coast and surrounds.

We then headed back down the road towards a fire break that leads down past the side of Ahns Peak, which we climbed to get a good view up Dave’s Track from the bottom.

As we passed the bottom entrance to Dave’s Track we had another short reopening ceremony before heading back out to the car park, with a short stop at Trotters Creek to cut back the gorse.

Thanks to Bill, John, Jane, Ross M, Maurice, Phyllis, Peter and Kate for all your work in making this a successful day.

Neville