ANPS gets dam close to needing crampons

The official title to this walk is "Pierces Creek area" but the new Cotter Dam is a bit of a feature in this area.

On which topic, folk may like to note this offer from the people at ACTEW.  I also found, after a fair bit of data mining, a lot of interesting stuff about the new dam on the ACTEW site.  This map shows the footprint of the old and new dams:
As well as showing that the surface area does not increase a whole lot (nowhere near the capacity increase of 20X) this image explains why there are 3 dams rather than just 1!  I had got to this image in trying to establish whether the area in which we were going to walk was about to go under water.  I crudely (and ACTEW can't take any heat for this image) transferred the boundaries of the catchment to a current Google earth image.
The blue line is my shot at the edge of the water for the new dam and the red is the area where we walked, so they are a disjoint set.

As we headed towards the meeting spot, the weather didn't look real good for going into the mountains

 However it cleared up a bit and we got a nice view of the main dam wall as we dropped into the Cotter Valley.
 Somewhat later in the walk I took this snap of the Cotter River way below us.  From the ACTEW plan of the water level I suspect this scene will be little changed by the new dam.
 OK.  Let us get to plants!  Before this expedition we had 72 taxa on the totem pole for this site.  16 newbies were found today!  We found three species of Pomaderris.  All were in bud - too smart to flower at this insect-challenged season:

Pomaderris angustifolia
 Pomaderris eriocephala
 Pomaderris andromedifolia
As one might expect from an area subject to the heat of a bushfire (10 years ago) there were a whole lotta Acacias here and there.  Most of them were also budlike.

A. melanoxylon ...
 .. which also had lotsa seed pods from last year, plus in this case a visible seed.
 A. rubida - buds and adult leaves ...
 .. while the juvenile stems explain the species name.
 We were - or at least I was - surprised to find this A. falciformis in flower
 Leptospermum brevipes had many capsules.
 Exocarpos cupressiformis had some fruits set, but they had not yet got to the cherry-red state.
 Persoonia rigida also had fruit set.
 OK: to flowers!!!!  When Frances, myself and Tammie did an exploratory foray a couple of days earlier the only flower detected was a dandelion!  We managed a good bit better today with 5 times the eyes and taking 4 times as long.  A usual suspect for Winter flowering is Monotoca scoparia.
 Dodonea viscosa spatulata showed buds (and spade-like leaves) ....
 ... as well as some typical hop-like fruits.
 Hardenbergia violaceae is always good to see.
 I am not sure if the Chrysocephalum semipapossum is early for next season or late for the last one!
 Cryptandra amara longiflora hadn't quite made it out of the bud stage!
 A hillside with a bunch of colourful Exocarpos cupressiformis.
 I think Vanity's Crossing road is closed!
 We did a cut round - which is where I photographed the Cryptandra-  to avoid a steep, crampon-requiring, downhill bit.  When I emerged everyone was looking back up the steep bit and squeaking about "Is that Martin up there?"  Do I look like a Dalek?
This snap shows the steepness of the track - obtained by angling the camera down - as well as the dalek.  It still doesn't look like Me, but like a pressure release valve on the pipelone.
 Despite the dry times we found some jelly fungus ...
 .. and a nic ebit of orangepeel.
 The rocks were colourful in some places ..
 ... and showing onion skin weathering in others.
I found the area very interesting in the way it is regenerating after the 2003 fires. It is a pity it is
  • becoming heavily infested with blackberries; and
  • possibly scheduled to become a trail bike centre under plans supported by the ACT Greens at the last ACT elections.

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