This was a nice day spent canyoning in the Blue Mountains with some old friends. We headed up to Mt Wilson and then headed down to the Wollangambe River and crossed it, and then entered Water Dragon Canyon. This took us back down to Wollangambe Canyon -and we visited a short section of that before exiting up the track we had earlier gone down.
In the party was Bob, Ian and Airdrie and their daughter Ella, and Doug and his daughter Sophie. We met at a private house at Mt Wilson where Ian and Airdrie were visiting a former work colleague. This property had a back route to the fire trail which shortened our walk in. Once on the track down to the canyon we could not help noticing a lot of changes – the track has been upgraded with many constructed steps (but no railings).
At one section we were stuck behind a large party in front when they were climbing down the tree roots section. But they were heading down a section of Wollangambe Canyon, and we soon left them as we climbed up the other side. A short way along the ridge we turned off and scrambled down a small tributary creek to reach our canyon. A short way down was the first abseil.
Like on a previous trip, we abseiled short distance and then set up a second and longer rope from a lower belay point.
It was below this abseil that I discovered something bad. I had been carrying a camera and tripod and hoped to get some good photos. I had spare battery – but had forgotten to put a memory card in the camera! The camera and tripod were now dead weight. I was then forced to use my phone for a few “snaps”.
Once everyone was down, we continued down the canyon.
A shirt tricky drop brought us to the top of the lower abseil.
This lower abseil is the longest at about 20 m, and was nice with a reasonable flow of water.
Then below this is a section of classic dark narrow canyon. This can all be seen from below by parties doing the Tourist Section of Wollangambe Canyon. It is short easy side trip.
It had been that section I had most wanted to photograph and here a phone camera is useless.
A little lower down –
We were soon at Wollangambe Canyon and we then only had one pool to do. But this is perhaps the longest pool in the canyon. I had brought a lilo, and the rest of the party chose to swim.
We then had lunch at the exit, and then climbed out the track we had gone down earlier. On the way out I spotted some Small Tonge Orchids – Cryptostylis leptochila –
This had been a really nice day out. It was great to meet up with some old friends and the canyon had been very nice as well. And also thanks to Ian’s friend Ben (and Andre) for showing us the short cut route at the start and a very welcome cup of tea at the end.
During the day, we discussed some history of the canyon. I had assumed the first party down it was a Catholic Bushwalking Club party (Tim Hager and others), but Doug recalled a trip he was on that went down the canyon, with the late Tony Norman, that he thinks was earlier. They had had to lower a log down for a belay point for one of the abseils, which seems to have been in place on the CBC descent.