Claustral Canyon – 9 December 2020

This was my first trip down Claustral Canyon for nearly two years – it was good to be back! Its one canyon I try and visit every season, but bushfires had prevented a visit the pervious summer. I have to admit though, that I recently visited Ranon Brook Canyon, which has a long section in common with Claustral Canyon. Both Ranon and Claustral are very fine canyons and it is hard to decide which is better. I think I marginally prefer Claustral.

My previous trip down Claustral had been an overnight photographic trip with Albert in February 2019. It had been great on that trip to have plenty of time to set up cameras and tripods and enjoy the changing light and atmosphere of the canyon. On a day trip – you tend to walk faster, and you don’t like slowing the party down.

On this trip, I was joined by Bob and Nipper. We set off from the carpark around 9:30 am. Perhaps  little early for the best lighting in Claustral? It did not take long to get into the creek and then it is not far to the two water jumps. I usually climb down both of these.

We soon arrived at Calcutta Falls and got out our ropes. With three of us – we carried two ropes. A 25m rope for the first and third abseil and a 19 m rope for the second abseil. This worked out very well. We were soon down into the Black Hole of Calcutta. Time to get out the camera and tripod.

Here are some photos from the Black Hole of Calcutta –

And now a sequence along the canyon below the Ranon junction –

Special thanks to both Bob and Nipper for waiting while I took these photos.

We arrived at the Thunder Canyon junction quite early. Too early for lunch, so we continued downstream through what is now a lower part of Thunder Canyon. Here is the Tunnel Swim –

And Bob and Nipper packing the rope –

Nipper took this photo of me and Bob in Rainbow Ravine where we had lunch.

On the walk out, we spotted the nice Flying Duck Orchids –

Here we are on the Camels Hump –

And a Christmas Beetle –

It was good to return to this classic canyon.

During the day, it was interesting to talk about some of our old trips.  I had been on many first descent trips with Bob during the 1970’s and 1980’s. These included Rocky Creek Canyon. Nipper (Ian Wilson), had been on the first trips down Crikey Canyon (with Bob) and Midwinter Canyon. I had thought he was on the first trip down Whungee Wheengee Canyon, but he said he wasn’t on that one. But, it had been his wife Airdrie Long, that was on that trip and was responsible for naming it. I had assumed it was Tony Norman. She had suggested this name as one that would be deliberately confusing (Wheengee Whungee Canyon is a well known Kanangra Canyon, named after an Aboriginal that Francis Barrallier had met on his attempt to cross the Blue Mountains). So on that early trip to Yarramun Creek were Airdrie, Tony Norman and Brad Phillips and they had descended the Whungee Wheengee Canyon from high up.  Also on the trip were Michael Doherty and myself – and we had chosen to cross Wollangambe by a quicker route as we did not want to have to swim long sections of Wollangambe Canyon. Our route had taken us down what is now called the Waterfall of Moss Canyon, but we had to climb out on a ledge and then descend further down as we only had a short scrambling rope.