Stony Creek day use area swimming hole pictured below
From Woodford, an alternative to Bellthorpe Range Road, is to ride a short section of the D’Aguilar Highway to Stony Creek Road. Stony Creek day use area boasts a picturesque waterhole for swimming, which is quite popular on a warm weekend. The detour to the day use area is a bit over 3km each way, off the main route, but well worth it if you have time.
The dirt road up the range from Stony Creek changes names several times, initially Stony Creek Rd, then Mountford and Brandons Rd. Regardless of the name changes, it’s a beautiful climb with an excellent dirt surface suitable for gravel or mountain bikes. Over its 10km length, it averages about 6.5% gradient, but does have steeper sections of 10-13%. It plateaus as you roll past the Branch Creek Rd turn off, but this relief is short-lived as it kicks again for another 2km or so towards the top. As a side track, Branch Creek Road is stunning, with a series of trickling rock pools and lush green vegetation. However, with its sawtooth elevation profile and a 3km long loose rocky climb from Stony Creek, it is not the best track for bike packing. The climbing on the main route is fairly smooth and consistent, eventually relenting about 2km before this section of dirt (Brandons Rd) meets with the Bellthorpe West Road. From this trail junction, discussed in the previous post, continue straight along the range another 1.5km to Old Brandons Mill site. It is worth noting the remainder of the ride across to Jimna is still quite challenging, especially as the legs tire, with many undulations in the remaining ~37km of dirt roads. Allow yourself some time to stop and appreciate the tall Eucalyptus Grandis species, and do some rock hopping in a mountain creek. The route up Mount Kilcoy Road also joins up with the Jimna-Bellthorpe Road 22km beyond Old Brandons Mill, so by that stage, three separate routes will have all converged with approximately 25km still to ride to Jimna.
Below are a series of photos from Stony Creek/Mountford/Brandons Rds climb, Brandons Mill atop the climb.
This series shows Stony Creek at the bottom of Branch Creek Rd, just beyond the day use area. The other photos in this series were taken along Branch Creek Road (side track to/from Stony Creek)
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