Hollow Mountain Walking Track For those of you who like a little mid week action make note of this – Hollow Mountain Walking Track – Track closure February 2012 – Work will commence at the end of the school holidays and will continue for up to five weeks through February, however this track will be open to visitors on weekends. Work to be completed includes re surfacing of the walking track, installation of drainage and steps. Access to Summerday Valley climbing area and Gulgurn Manja Art Shelter will remain open during this time.
The Gallery Walking Track For those climbers who are physically blessed to be able to climb the routes at The Gallery in the Vic Range, Grampians, you may have noticed last year that after the floods, the climbers access track was closed due to flood damage. Parks staff also laid branches across to deter people from travelling that way. Unfortunately, this caused climbers to then realign the track around the right hand side of the Aboriginal art shelter and through a revegetation area. Interestingly, years ago, PV worked with climbers to create a separate climbers track(the now damaged one) that directed them away from the shelter. This was for fear of erosion and impact to the site. So…not so good that this was occurring again.
Following a climbers query about the new track and the old one being closed, I contacted Dave Roberts, ranger at Halls Gap, who was very appreciative of the information and acted upon it quite quickly.
Current situation is as follows:
PV have opened up the first part of the loop up until where the track heads up to the Gallery.
So basically you head up there and back down, the same way. Please use this access and not around the right side of the art shelter. I have not yet had the opportunity to visit myself so any feedback on this would be appreciated.
It was also noted that there are some sections that are eroding quite badly on the climbers track so I will be visiting sometime soon to look at what we can do to control it. This is not a PV maintained track, care of this will be up to us climbers to maintain – this is the way that PV would like to see most of the climbers tracks managed. From my reports –” On the first part of the track there is one stretch where there is some deep erosion probably half a metre deep for 20 metres. The second part of the track is basically obliterated and probably needs marking with tape.”
I will be looking for volunteers after the initial inspection to help with the work and am hoping that those climbers that do use this track and the cliffs to climb at will be involved. Stay tuned!
*** Should there be any cairns remaining that are still directing climbers past the art shelter and revegetation area, please take it upon yourselves to remove these. Cheers!
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