Yileen Canyon – 27 December 2020

Martin and Steffy had proposed a canyoning trip on Sunday. I was one of those invited, and I was not too fussy about what canyon we visited – and it ended up being Yileen Canyon. The party was Martin, Steffy, Rossco, Rick, Robin, Tony, Kate and myself.

Yileen is not one of my favourite canyons – it has always seemed to offer not that much canyon for the effort involved. It also has logistic issues – a car shuffle is a good idea, but that often means a large and slow party, and two long ropes must be carried – and only used for the last abseil – the only one which requires the two ropes. The canyon formation is not very deep nor sustained. But – on the day it was a very enjoyable trip. Recent rain had promised a nice water flow.

Some of the party had arrived early and set up the car shuffle, so when we met the others near the Mt Wilson turn-off at 10 am, we could set off straight away. The walk out along the ridge is always pleasant with orchids to look out for, and also quite good views of the Grose Valley.

Here are some of the orchids we spotted on the walk in –

Horned Orchid – Orthoceras strictum

Midge Orchid

Large Tongue Orchid – Cryptostylis subulata

Flying Duck Orchid – Caleana major

And some photos of the views –

we soon arrived at the start of the canyon.

There was one place where it was tricky to climb down. Some of us used a hand line.

Below was some really nice formation.

Then we arrived at the first of three abseils. This one is short – down into a deep pool, then the rope is handy for the next short drop once you swim across.

Here is Robin on the abseil –

Then some more nice formation.

Below this the canyon is blocked up with boulders. You need to scramble along a ledge to the true left to reach the belay point for the second abseil. This is the highlight of the canyon – down a nice slot. It was great with more water than usual.

Here is Steffy descending –

And now Martin abseils down –

But, just around the corner, the canyon suddenly ends.

At this stage, we caught up with another party, still on the last abseil, so we decided to make use of the time delay by having lunch.

The last abseil needs to be rigged carefully. It can be done with two ropes tied together. Our ropes were taught to be about 50 m and 40 m, but when used they seemed about equal length. We descended about 40 m to a large bolder then carefully off that to reach small tree and from that we did a 4 m drop down a slippery rock to the bottom.