A long weekend is a good time to head out and visit some of the more remote canyons of the Northern Blue Mountains. Rik had organised a trip and and had invited Wendy, Rob and myself. We were joined by Dan, Sharon and Brett who all came up from the ACT.
The weather forecast for the region was for “isolated showers” on the Sunday and Monday and a reasonably fine day on the Saturday – not too bad for canyoning.
We visited two canyons during the weekend. On Saturday – the one we visited was a long and mainly horizontal canyon. We walked up the canyon from below. With a bit of difficulty – we could reverse all the waterfalls in the canyon and scramble right up through it to the top and then retrace our steps down it. It had a lot of alternating sections – changing from twisting, completely dry corridors to short but deep pools. In one place was a spectacular dark tunnel. A nice canyon. The only problem had been the pools – they were a bit smelly and scanky – and could have benefited with a bit more water flow. We would not have that problem the next day!
This took up most of Saturday. After that we set up a camp ready for more canyoning adventures the next day.
However, during the night – we had heavy rain. The rain started bucketing down around 3am and continued till about 9am. The creek close to our campsite rose considerably. Not a wise time to set off for a canyon.
However, during the day, the rain eased to drizzle, and the creek went down a lot. By lunchtime, we could set off for our canyon. The one we planned to visit was very long, and deep, dark and sustained. It also has a lot of swims. Not a good place to be in a storm.
So, we cautiously set off – up a pass and along a ridge to our canyon. When we arrived, there was still only light drizzle and the sky seemed brighter – so we committed ourselves to the canyon and abseiled in.
The canyon turned out to be excellent. Fresh flow had “washed” it out – it was in nice condition. It had a few short abseils but many awkward climb downs and scrambles. A great sporting canyon.
Despite our late start, we moved through the canyon quickly and completed it in the late afternoon. It was then not too far to get back to our campsite.
On Sunday – there was some more rain, and we abandoned our plans to visit a third canyon. To get to it would require some tricky scrambling – something we didn’t fancy in the conditions. Instead, we walked out back to the cars.
More photos of the trip are on my website here.