Devil's Hole via Nellies Glen Falls

 

 We started at Boars Head and Cahills lookout, enjoying the amazing view of the Blue mountains area. 

We then descended through a fire trail, going pass the Norths lookout and entered a section of the six foot track. Although there were warning signs saying the descent from there to Nellies Glen is very deep, the steps made it to be easier than I was expected.

Quickly descending down the Glen, what caught my eyes were a small creek. "Maybe there is a waterfall here" 

And I wasn't wrong. Nellies Glen falls were magnificent, the rain from the day before certainly helped with the water flow, making the falls even more majestic. People in the group started to take their checking in photos, including myself. 

 

We returned to the track and arrived at what seem to be a ranch since there were two horses there, everyone was so excited and took even more pictures. For me, the horses seemed to just want food from us, I quietly sad in front of them in a safe distance and had my quick snack. 

The top view from the horse ranch

 The track to the devil's was a little bit harder, since it was all ascending. Despite track notes online saying the track is very vague, to me, there was a cleared marked track and many traces of people who walked before. 

 

Since I'm fitter and walked at a faster pace going up, Jem - the group leader allowed me and Russell to go up first. The ascending was very fun, Russell and I chose to climb through a hole instead of walking the track around at one part, and we climbed up all the way to the devil's hole. The rock formations in the area were very interesting, seeing how there are many sharp cuts compared to other places intrigued me. Devil's hole as expected were stunning. This nature hole were formed probably through collapsing boulders. 

 

Along the way I had great talk with Russell, he told me about new tracks and tips when walking! I'm glad that I finally made a new friend through Meetup.

Boxvale Tramway track

 

Box Vale tramway track with my friend Peggy! We did the whole loop from Box Vale carpark to Mittagong lake Alexandra. The walk from the carpark to Nattai gorge lookout was very easy, it was mostly very well formed fire trails so we didn't know that was the only well paved part of the whole track! Nonetheless the lookout was amazing! 

We could see the whole Nattai national park area, we enjoyed our lunch there while looking over the valley. We reached the Box Vale old tramline which were used for coal mining, now it is just an empty tunnel! 

The way that led to Boxvale tunel

Next part came the incline - which was also used to be used to transfer coal, this was when the track started to get hard, we had to either slide down on our butt or using the guide rope to made our way down the around 700m deep incline. 

After that there were no visible track. We arrived at Box creek and since the track was completely covered by branches from earlier bushfires, there were no visible pathway. Luckily, we used the map that we took at the beginning of the track and figured our way to the junction of Box creek and Nattai gorge. 

From there we located the track by a combination of using the map and the marking tapes that were sometimes visible at some tree branches. 

 

A natural arch!

We reached the forty foot fall before nearly get lost in one of the turns. The falls were amazing but we didn't get too close for the fear of possibilities of getting to the lake too late and miss the train. 

 

Climbing up to the top of the falls, we couldn't find which way to go since even the map wasn't very clear at this part, luckily a local group showed us the way to lake Alexandra. 

 

After some more off track walks because of mistakenly taking a wrong turn, we finally reach lake Alexandra right before sunset. We had a break there, talking about our next trip while watching the sun.