Should we travel cattlewater pass??

Will be interested in the replies myself - we tried it 2 years ago but got bogged in a wet patch before we got anywhere near the hills section. There had been a bit of rain about but the going was quite good - we drove straight into the deceptive wet patch - looked bone dry, in the middle of a grassy plain. Only went down about 400mm but the mud was like warm butter - a real bugger. Dug ourselves out and turned back. Will try it another time - a good short cut to that gem region - without rain, it is supposed to be quite straight forward (which goes for all outback travel I guess :-).

People at the station do not like people going through there as they are worried of fires, they turned us back some time ago. 2002 we travelled from the north and there was a sign there promoting the track. There is a very steep hill thast will have you scratching to get up it if you go from the south, more so if you have a camper, that is the only place that you may have problems. I am not sutre of the status of the track. However there is a nice drive to the plenty to the west of the cattle water pass, you would have no trouble with that.

Following on from Banjo (SA) and Lindsay's comments, the track is quite good in places and there was definitely no damp patches two weeks ago. However, there are a lot of soft sandy bits and at least one steep rocky hill that would give you serious problems with an on-road trailer travelling from the South.

The track is also quite narrow in places with nowhere to pull over in case of oncoming traffic, not that we saw any.

The track to the West is Pinnacle Rd. According to the map it joins the Plenty around 8km East of Gemtree. I have'nt travelled that track so cannot recommend it but I'm sure another poster mentioned it on the Forum in relation to another query re Cattlewater Pass sometime in the last couple of months.