Hat Hill Canyon – 21 January 2021

Another great day spent canyoning in the Blue Mountains. I was with Bob and Nipper. We first visited hat Hill Canyon at Blackheath.

It was an easy short walk to the start of the canyon – the first of three constrictions.

This first constriction is short – perhaps less than 100 m long, but quite nice. From its end its not too far to the second constriction. This starts in a similar way to the previous one – a scramble down to a long dark pool.

This constriction is longer and ends in some bouldery scrambling. From there it is a longer walk down to the third constriction.

This constriction is the best and longest one out of the three.

At the end, we climbed a short way up a tributary on the east side to a small waterfall flowing through a series of natural arches.

From here, it was easy to climb out onto Hat Hill Ridge.

On the way out was spotted a single Flying Duck Orchid –

And later we spotted another orchid –

And a large patch of Sundews –

We arrived at an Aboriginal site where we could see some engraved Emu footprints –

And nearby were some sharpening grooves –

Walking back to Bob’s car, we saw another orchid – a Horned Orchid –

We climbed a nearby knoll to look for more Aboriginal sites (we found none), and found a shady place for lunch.

It was still quite early in the day, and Bob was keen for a quick trip through Empress Canyon. Nipper, had not been through this canyon before, so he joined Bob. I was not keen at being stuck by large commercial parties at the abseil, so decided to skip the canyon. I did walk down however and got some photos of the Asmodeus Pool –

And walking back, I spotted this nice Rufous Fantail –

And I just made it to Empress Falls as Bob and Nipper were descending. They later said they got to the top of the waterfall just as a party before them were pulling down their rope.