Kelly cave and Barry falls (Beechworth). Medium-hard, approx. 20km.

Date/Time
Date(s) - 25 Jul 2020

Category(ies)

  • Grade 4 Medium-Hard
  • Leader: Ian Trevaskis
  • Phone: 0425782983
  • Participant numbers:Max 10 participants
  • Final booking date: Final bookings Wednesday 22nd July

Victoria.

We’ll meet in Beechworth and convoy to the starting point of the walk – a 4WD is not required but your car is likely to get a bit dirty as we will drive on an unsealed road. The first five kilometres are easy walking (relatively flattish) on a well-maintained but quiet 4WD track with the Beechworth historic park (forest) on one side and open farmland on the other. We then leave the track and head into the forest to the cave, which is part of a large rock outcropping overlooking Woolshed valley.

We won’t be following a proper track for this part – instead we’ll be pushing through the scrub for roughly 500m. The cave is on a steep slope which is likely to have slippery rock and loose dirt/vegetation.

After morning tea we’ll head back through the scrub up the slope to rejoin the track and retrace most of the way back toward the cars. I’m thinking we’ll take another ‘detour’ into the forest, perhaps by one of the small streams, at an appropriate time for lunch.

We then take a different approach and start heading ‘down’, initially on Nieoff’s road, before leaving the road and making our way down a gulley. Initially the gulley is a small creek, but starts to open up, culminating in one large gorge, before another (Barry falls) 100m further on. This section of the walk is off-track, and will again be quite slippery in places. From here, we’ll follow Nieoff’s road back up to the cars (about 250m height gain). There is a chance of some cars on this road, but there is plenty of room for us to move aside.

Most of this walk is on good 4WD/unsealed road. But we will have to go slow and take care on the off-track sections, particularly when we are near the slopes/gorges.

(For future reference, splitting this walk would make for two nice ‘medium’ walks).