Pages Pinnacle is a Thrilling Razorback Ridge Hike Just 20 Minutes from the Gold Coast

Love getting your heart racing from both the hiking and the heights? Casey takes us up and down Pages Pinnacle, on a steep, exposed, adventure – just out of suburban Gold Coast.

We Are Explorers acknowledges that this adventure is located on the traditional Country of the Yugambeh people who have occupied and cared for the lands, waters, and their inhabitants for thousands of years. We pay our respects to them as the Traditional Custodians and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.

Quick Overview

Pages Pinnacle is a 400m tall volcanic plug, which you can summit on a steep 6km return track in the Numinbah Nature Reserve on the Gold Coast.

Pages Pinnacle Quick Facts

Distance: 6km (approx)
Duration: 3-4 hours
Elevation gain: 400m
Nearest town: Nerang, Gold Coast

About Pages Pinnacle

Pages Pinnacle is a thrilling hike with plenty of exposure to open cliff faces and heart-racing scrambling. From the top you’ll get great views of the Numinbah Valley and Gold Coast.

The area’s also popular with climbers, with a bunch of great climbing routes up, down, and around the big rock feature, which is what brought me here in the first place.

The hike is in the beautiful Numinbah Nature Reserve, made up of over 858ha of native forests and creeks.

You also get a chance to cool off on the way up or down when you cross Wild Cattle Creek on the trail.

Read more: Remember to leave no trace

History of Pages Pinnacle

Pages Pinnacle was named after Sir Earle Grafton Page, who was Australia’s second shortest serving Prime Minister (19 days), but the true Yugambeh name for the rock feature is kundohikulli, meaning ‘rock shaped boat’.

The Pinnacle is a volcanic plug, part of the Wollumbin/Mt Warning Caldera, the remains of an ancient massive shield volcano, which is about 40km across.

How to Get to Pages Pinnacle

To start the hike, the easiest place to park is on Pine Creek Road at the Scouts Numinbah Camp Site, which is a 20 minute drive by car from Nerang and the same from Springbrook National Park.

It’s about 45 minutes’ drive from Gold Coast Airport and just over an hour from Brisbane (depending on the traffic).

Where to Stay Near Pages Pinnacle

Despite the car park being called a ‘scouts campsite’, there’s no way I know of booking or staying there, but there’s a swathe of accommodation options nearby on the usual booking sites.

Though it’s about a 40 minute drive away, I always recommend staying at the World Heritage-listed Lamington National Park, or about 30 minutes away on the beach at Burleigh Heads.

Skill Level

Intermediate-Advanced

This is the steepest hike I’ve done around the Gold Coast.

The route is challenging in sections and requires scrambling over exposed rock faces, so you’ll need to enjoy heights. Some of the hiking sections are also quite steep, so some level of fitness and experience is best.

The rocky sections of the route are dangerous in the wet due to the steep, smooth rocks you need to climb over to get to the top.

The trail also isn’t marked, other than the odd rock cairn, and it requires some bush bashing.

There’s Telstra 4G phone reception on most of this hike.

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Essential Gear

• Good, grippy shoes
• Long pants (for bush bashing)
• Rain jacket
• A hat
• Water bottle
• Swimmers (for the way back down)
• PLB
• First aid kit

What It’s Like Climbing Pages Pinnacle

Starting at the Scouts Numinbah Camp Site car park, go around the gate, to your right, and follow the bushy fire trail. Not far down there’s a junction, turn right here and follow the trail until you get to the creek.

This is also the way you’ll come back, and the creek is the perfect shady spot to cool down and have a swim after the hike.

To get to the pinnacle though, cross the creek, and turn right at the next junction, about 300m from the creek.

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This section is all wide, well-maintained fire trails that slowly take you uphill through the scrub.

The next junction is only another 100m or so, where you’ll turn left and start going uphill.

Keep following this fire trail uphill, which turns slightly left before turning right alongside the pinnacle cliffs, which you’ll see to your left as you walk.

The sudden vertical walls of granite that shoot up to the pinnacle are a marvel from the base too.

Ignore the first turn offs into the bush, which are signed with ‘Danger’ or have anything to do with climbing, as these head to the rock climbing crags.

Sorry, more uphill. Keep following the fire trail up and up, it’ll take a hard right turn then start gently coming around left again, through more native heath and gum groves.

Now start looking for signs of a trail that goes through the bush to the left here. You can go another few hundred metres and cut back on a better trodden trail, but the ‘short cut’ is pretty obviously tramped and I recall a rock cairn with ‘PP’ for Pages Pinnacle carved into it.

Head up the ‘short cut’ almost 200m and you’ll see the spiny ridge beginning on your left. The formations look like the back of a giant stegosaurus in eternal slumber.

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This is where the fun starts. From here it’s about picking your line along the rocks, but staying on the spine always feels easiest to me, keeping three points of contact at all times.

Not far in, you’ll get to an east facing lookout over the nature reserve and Hinze Dam/Advanceton Lake.

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Keep following the trail up and you can get to the top of the cliffs which are bolted for climbing. If you bring your gear you can rappel down, which saves some walking.

From here you can follow the faint trail a few hundred metres to the highest point of the pinnacle, but last time I was there the scrub was very thick and we were almost crawling at points.

There’s also not really view from the top of the pinnacle, but you do get to point later and say ‘I was up there’.

Follow the same way back and make sure you stop in the creek for a swim!

Tips For Hiking Pages Pinnacle

• In summer this area is often above 30ºC and there’s almost no shade on top of the main ridge. The rock itself can get quite hot too
• This area gets plenty of thunderstorms and in wet weather, the rocks and ridgeline get quite slippery (speaking from experience). So make sure you keep an eye on the weather and if rain is forecast or has hit the rock any time recently, save it for another drier day
• Parts of the trail are a bush bash, so I recommend wearing long pants. When I first hiked this about ten years ago, I was bitten by a Shellback tick and developed a beef allergy – true story!

Read more: How To Hike in Hot Weather

Pages Pinnacle FAQs

How long does it take to hike Pages Pinnacle?

The hike up and down Pages Pinnacle generally takes around 3-4 hours.

Is Pages Pinnacle highly rated?

The Pages Pinnacle hike is both highly rated in difficulty, as it involves a lot of rock scrambling across a razorback. But it’s also highly rated on sites like AllTrails (4.7 stars) as a thoroughly worthwhile and beautiful hike.

What type of rock is Pages Pinnacle?

According to SEQ Water, the rock that makes up Pages Pinnacle is rhyolite lava, that formed as an elongate plug that filled a vent on the north side of the Tweed Volcano.

Table of contents image by @_thelittleadventurer

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• Larapinta Falls is an Isolated & Lush Waterfall 2 Hours From Brissie & the Gold Coast
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• Hiking Lower Ballanjui Falls in Lamington National Park QLD
• The 14km Warrie Circuit Hike Passes 7 Rainforest-Clad Waterfalls in QLD’s Springbrook National Park