I had known of two relatively obscure waterfalls in the Wentworth Falls area for a while but did not know very much information about them. All I knew was that they were in upper Wentworth Creek downstream from the Crematorium, and roughly west of Waratah St. The latest version of the Blue Mountains Geographical Encyclopaedia had some more information and grid references.
Sapphos Leap
A cool day was forecast for the upper mountains, too cold for canyoning, so Bob and myself decided to have a go at visiting these falls. Our route was from the west end of Waratah Street, following an old road easement across a swamp to a fire trail that went down to an old weir. The whole route was quiet scrubby – and this included the weir access road – it was very overgrown.
But it did not take too long to reach the dam. We could look down and see a low concrete wall and banked up water. We climbed down to a rocky area below the dam wall. This placed us at the top of Sapphos Leap.
The waterfall was around 20 m high, and there was no obvious way of scrambling down close by. Instead we went along the to top the cliffs on the true right to a better vantage point.
We then went back to the dam wall, and continued upstream. We soon reached an old pump house. And old pump was still present, although the electric engine had been removed.
The backed up water didn’t extend that far, and not far upstream of the dam lies Carters Falls. This is a double waterfall – or really a set of two cascades. Here is the lower falls –
And about 50 m further upstream, the upper falls –
Although not very high, these waterfalls are quite attractive. Then we headed back into the scrub for the walk out.
Here is one of the poles for the powerlines to the pump house.
The weir seems to have been put in to supply water for steam locomotives. I know the dam at Wentworth Falls Lake was also put in for this purpose, and that is a far larger body of water. Perhaps this small dam was used to augment the water in the Lake?
This had been a short, but very interesting excursion. We were back at Bob’s car quite early, so we then headed down the mountains for another walk near Springwood.