Swingbridges & Tunnels

Starting at the campground follow the trail and cross the first swingbridge, a bit further along you will see the exit to the Dubbo Trail on your left... run past that and over the second swingbridge. Shortly after that you will come to the main tunnel... you will need either a headlamp or a good torch for this, the floor is rocky, undulating and has many many puddles of varying depth.

Out the other side stop briefly and look to your left to see the river coming out of the rock... worth a snap!

Follow the trail for a while of pretty cruisy running until you see a set of steps on your right... head up them and break out the light again and head into the Windows Trail... again it is worth taking your time and checking out the views from the side trails.

Once through the tunnels, take the main trail that veers left and follow that down and around to the next swingbridge. Over the Swingbridge and up onto the trail and a little left there is a small narrow trail that leaves the main trail heading up the hill - if you find yourself on a well formed trail going either way then you have missed it (easy to do)... so double back and look for the small trail.

Follow that up all the way until it spits you out on the road at the top and turn left. Carry on up the road, go straight past the first road that come in from the right (you will come out of this later) and watch for the next track to the right... signposted as County Road. Head up here, a little rocky and steep at first, it quickly settles to a very runnable trail all the way to the top of the hill.

There is only one trail off this before the top, you will pass the top of the Dubbo Track that we passed the bottom of earlier. More about that later, but for now, run straight past.

Eventually at the top you will come to a 3 way junction, off to the left is the Mangakino Pack Track (great route but not today)... the straight ahead trail and the one to the right both lead to the same spot so take you choice. The right hand trail is slightly shorter but quite a bit more technical... on this run we headed straight ahead.

At the next intersection you have the choice of a side trip to the trig, great views and worth it if you are not in a hurry. Otherwise take the other trail at the sign and start heading down the hill... be careful, it can be very slippery if there has been rain. From here just follow the main trail until you come out the bottom onto the road you ran earlier. We had planned to run back up the hill and down Dubbo which would have made this the Xterra National Course, however on this day there had been a lot of rain and the trail can be very muddy and has a fast flowing stream crossing that we decided to skip. So from this point we retraced our steps to the bottom of the hill.

Then instead of going back over the swingbridge we took the right hand trail and followed it with the river on our left until we came to another swingbridge which we crossed, just after that we passed the steps to the Windows on out left and then followed the trail back to the start.