Donna’s Track Grose River, Blue Mountains National Park, 15 April 2018

Grade: Exploratory
Leader: Liam Heery
The impetus for this walk was to explore an area of the Blue Mountains that few people visit. The Grose River flows out of the Blue Gum Forest through magnificent gorges in a very remote area, before joining up with the Nepean River near Yarramundi. The plan was to see how many entry/exit points we can navigate on day trips (rather than overnight) into this remote section interestingly named the Devil’s Wilder-ness.
On a couple of previous occasions, I have explored the ‘easier’ lower section of the Grose with entry points at Grose Vale. This route was going to be a bit harder with off track sections and without any marked tracks.
Starting off on the Donna Track fire trail we reached its terminus fairly quickly and had a leisurely morning tea before heading down the ridge to the Grose. This was supposed to be a fairly straight forward route to the Grose and further down river to Wentworth cave. We found the semblance of a track and occasional tags, so the going was reasonably easy, notwithstanding that it was a nearly vertical descent of 400 meters. The route also enters a creek about two thirds of the way down and that involved a lot of rock scrambling. The route would be impass-able if it were wet!
On reaching the Grose we were greeted with some magnificent water pools, and while contemplating a swim decided to keep moving until lunch time, as we still had a fair way to go. Rather than rock hoping up the river we decided to cross over and look for any remnants of the old Engineers Track (built in the late 1850s), which could make walking up river considerably easier. Sure enough we came across sections of the track, in some places very visible and others disappeared altogether. However, there was enough to make walking much easier requiring little ‘real’ bush bashing. Notwithstanding our good progress, we hadn’t made it as far as I’d expected by lunch time, so af-ter a swim, lunch and good rest we re-evaluated our situation and dis-cussed turning back or forging on to an unknown exit.
The exit I wanted to take was one that Michael Keats had been unable to explore and so I wanted to see if it was going to be possible! Everyone wanted to keep going so we headed off to the next bend on the river and then headed up an unnamed creek following a route that I had pre-planned.
While it was steep going and we needed to make our way around a series of three to four cliff lines, we made good pro-gress and reached the point where I expected that we would be able to commence our final exit. Further dis-cussion led us to move up stream until we encoun-tered a complete wall and no way out. Turning back we followed the contours and found a number of slots that took us very close to where we needed to be. However, each slot we then explored led to either further dead ends, or were too high to scale.
Given the time, was now after 4pm, we decided to cut our losses and attempt a different exit, but that would defi-nitely have meant either walking out in the dark or be-come benighted! Henry had spotted one final slot on the way and before we retreated he went back to see if it was a negotiable route. It took a little while, but Henry had managed with a little climb to get over the last cliff line blocking our way. And so, with the assistance of a rope we were able to get everyone up and over through what we are now naming “Henry’s Pass”.
This took us to the top of the ridge I wanted and to an ‘old’ fire trail, that while again was very overgrown, was passable and we reached the cars just on 6pm when it got dark! Most of us then headed off for a fine meal and refreshments in the Archibald hotel at Kurrajong Heights. Thanks to Jacqui, Charles, Nick, Fiona, and from the Bush Club Robert, Youjia and of course Henry.