MT-GCT Grand Cliff Top Walk Trek

July 5, 2025 Autumn, Experienced Adult Hikers, Healthy & Fit Adults, Katoomba, Leura, Multi-Day Treks, Spring, Summer, Wentworth Falls, Winter

Trail Specifications:

Nature Trail Tour Title:	Grand Cliff Top Walk Trek
NT Tour Code:	MT-GCT
NT Tour Code Description:	Multi-Day Trek
Tour Category	Tailored
Trail Official Opening Date:	Monday 25th March 2024
Tour Current Status:	Scouted> Recce > ~~Practised~~ > ~~Commercial~~
Trail Title:	Grand Cliff Top Walk
Trail Hike Length:	24 km
Starting Location:	Katoomba Railway Station
Finishing Location	Wentworth Falls Railway Station
Tour Offering (Duration):	Six separate 1/2 day hikes
Transport Transfers:	Blue Mountains Region only transfers included. (ie: Not Sydney)

Trail Introduction:

With this particularly newly upgraded trail officially re-launched by the NSW Government in 2024, Nature Trail has adopted its own unique approach to consider offering it as a potential hiking tour.

We initially consider it to be a new hiking concept of variable forest ambience trek experience from Katoomba to Wentworth Falls. It’s overall length is over at least 20 km to officially do in 2-days, which is ‘not for the faint-hearted’, so Nature Trail adopts a more relaxed and multi-day approach to this trail. On this trek we only travel in daylight hours in half day segments. This is our starting position.

The prime hiking track component of the trail Prince Henry Cliff Walk along the Jamison Escarpment plateau top (Katoomba to Leura) which was partially upgraded (mostly during 2023 and 2024) by track builders and lift helicopters contracted to the local Blue Mountains Council and the Parks Service of New South Wales (NSW) from $13 million grant funding from the NSW Government.

This overall trail was in 2024 re-branded by the above government agencies as the Grand Cliff Top Walk and many sections of the hiking track sections are historic (back to the late 1800s) and remain in an old state of repair (eg: steps in either treated-pine timbered boardwalks/staircases, old sandstone or bare earth/mud), so the track conditions currently vary in standard.

We estimate the overall hiking distance of this trail to be around 24 km. However due to the trail’s distance, juxtaposition to upper central Blue Mountains villages and disconnectivity, Nature Trail offers this tour to our guests as Multi-Day Trek, this by segmenting it into 7 x Half-Day Hike segments including all road transport that we offer by dedicated chauffeured private transfers.

However, not all 7 segments need be undertaken. Nature Trail offers this particular tour simply as as a pool of choice to our guests, as we do with all our tours. Currently we are reconnoitring this particular trek and designing variations quite different to its official brochure.

Our initial tour design proposal is to offer this as a bespoke guided tour on a private guest basis in the following choice of tour delivery options:

Our Tour Options:

(A) Cliff Top Full Mounty – as one tour trek of the entire hiking tour end-to-end (Katoomba to Wentworth Falls) over 7 half days (back-to-back, or spread further with breaks) with all flexible transport transfers on demand;

(B) Cliff Top Choice Tour: A choice of any half-day segment or any half day segments in any order or indeed section sample;

(C) Cliff Top Blended Tour: includes (B) plus other of our tour options, as our guests prefer – hiking or non-hiking, whatever.

Tour pricing will fairly vary according to our guests’ choices.

Nature Trail’s tour design for what we entitled our ‘Grand Cliff Top Walk Trek‘ is currently an unfinished work-in-progress. We will continue with our on-ground reconnoitres, practice trips, fine tuning, and government red tape before we offer this tour commercially.

Meanwhile, Nature Trail provides interested visitors to the following relevant background reading about this particular proposed tour route.

Trail Wayfinding Signage:

Official trail wayfinding signpost specific to this ‘Grand Cliff Top Walk’ which has plagiarised Nature Trail’s business logo. (Close up below)

This is Blue Mountains Council’s unauthorised and plagiarised use of Nature Trail business logo. (See our logo since 2018 below). Council and their Parks Service brethren have used since 2024 as the wayfinding sign throughout the trail for this new marathon concept trail. It features the exact same copy of our black cockatoo silhouette with the only difference being Council shot her mate – hence the ghostly white entrails. We’re content to thus modify it for our use.

Nature Trail’s Tour Director, Steven Ridd, created this integrated logo/motto/tagline design back in 2018.

It is a version of our original one (below) that Steven designed in 2013, who had commissioned Katoomba Blue Mountains local Lyn Naismith to paint specially for Nature Trail. In the original version it was a pair of endangered Glossy Black Cockatoos native to the Blue Mountains – male and female, each having slightly different in feather colourings.

Soon after Steven in June 2025 discovered the government’s plagiarism of his business logo design, he rightly complained to both Blue Mountains Council and the Parks Service to communicate our displeasure of have our logo nicked by government.

Since 2019, Nature Trail has copped continual intimidation and business lockdown by the NSW Government:

Bushfire emergencies lockdowns
Ongoing landslip closures due to government stormwater neglect
Pandemic lockdowns – (Feb 2020 through to Nov 2022)
Government grant repayment extortion
Our tour vehicle licensing extortion threats of $110,000
Nature Trail logo nicking.

Here are two complaints by Nature Trail of the governmental plagiarism:

>https://naturetrail.com.au/blog-post/npws-parks-service-plagiarises-nature-trails-copyright-logo/

>https://naturetrail.com.au/blog-post/blue-mountains-council-bmcc-plagiarises-our-business-logo-and-then-falsely-claims-it-to-be-gundungurra/

Yet, our research efforts into what is a concept track route of amalgamated shorter and in some cases historic tracks, has revealed that the title of this track Grand Cliff Top Walk, has itself been also plagiarised by government.