Both Bob and myself had been talking about another trip to Claustral Canyon for a while. But we had been put off by cool weather and too much rain. But now conditions seemed to be right. A warm day (30° C) was forecast and there had been no recent rain, so conditions should be ideal.
It turned out to be great day. Claustral is a showcase canyon and one that I like to photograph. But that means carrying down a camera and tripod – and the weight all adds up. On this trip, Bob offered to carry the rope and I was grateful for this. For Claustral we only take a short (25m) rope – so the weight is not that much.
I don’t like stopping too much, as it takes time to unpack a camera from two dry bags (one inside the other, with a small towel in the other bag), and then set up a tripod. So I only took photos in the main section of canyon below Calcutta Falls.
We left the carpark around 9:30 am and took about an hour to reach the first abseil, then through the abseils fairly quickly. I took my first photos at 10:44 am in the Black Hole of Calcutta –
The next set of photos were all taken between the Ranon and Thunder junctions. After recent storms there seems to be a lot of changes in this section. The water level was higher than usual and a lot of logs had moved around. Also there were a number of trees that had fallen into the canyon.
I had been hoping for some light beams – sun rays in the canyon to add atmosphere. They often appear after wet spells and in hot weather, but not this visit. Or at least not while we visited the canyon. I think with the new way in – it is much quicker to reach the abseils and so you go through the long corridor of constricted canyon too early in the day for the Sun to be in the right place to form beams. Perhaps it would be better to leave the carpark an hour or two later? But on this trip, like on many others, there was a forecast for possible afternoon thunder storms.
One problem I had on this trip was falling droplets. There was a lot of water falling all along the canyon due to the recent rain and I had to be careful none landed on the camera lens front element. I did sipe the lens down with a cloth a few times.
Bob had gone on ahead to wait in the sun at the Thunder junction. I was grateful that he was happy to wait while I took the photos.
We quickly continued on through the next section, now in Thunder Canyon. I took a last photo at the Tunnel Swim. If you know the canyon well, you can see a large boulder, newly wedged into the canyon just before the swim.
Due to the highlight water, we abseiled the drop down to the Tunnel Swim and a lower drop a short way beyond. Slower, but safer.
Then we climbed up Rainbow Ravine, stopping for lunch part way up. Then the long trudge up the Camels Hump, back down to the creek and up the entrance/exit gully back to the car. On the way out, we did have some rain and we could hear thunder not far away. But the rain at least was welcome – cooling us down. We arrived back at Bob’s car a little before 3:30 pm.
All the photos on this trip were taken with a Sony A7rII camera using a Sony 16-35 mm f4 lens. Exposures ranged from 2 to about ten second at f8 or f5.6 and using 800 ISO (except for the last photo which was hand held at 12,800 ISO, and that was the only photo taken hand held).