Coorongooba Labyrinth Canyoning - 27 - 31 December 2009

All images © David Noble. No image can be used for any purpose without permission.

Party - Rik, Martin, Steffy, Su Li, John, Dave

For many summers a group of us have been heading off to the Northern Blue Mountains for an extended canyoning trip starting on Boxing day. This year - Boxing day was very wet, so we headed off a day later. The weather forecast was not good -with rain forecast for the next few days. Despite the rain we had quite a reasonable trip.

Page 1

Day 1

Above - Steffy and Martin

Above - Rik found some faint aboriginal charcoal drawings in this small cave at the head of our creek.

Above - The cave

Above - Our first creek - not always as nice as this

Above - Climbing down the creek

Above - The creek

Above - on an earlier trip we had discovered this small side canyon. We were not sure that it was worth the effort to explore it from above

Above - The side canyon

Day 2

Above - We had stayed in this big cave in a defile in the creek. It was a good campsite - but heavy, continuous rain overnight had blown in.

Above - We set off for a side trip to another canyon

Above - Su Li in the canyon

Above - Su Li on the first abseil. Rik below.

Above - Rik on the very narrow second abseil. This takes you to the bottom of a long, deep and very narrow slot.

Above - John abseiling down

Above - canyon formation

Above - creek detail

Day 3

Above - Steffy

Above - Rik

Above - We leave the first creek system and climb onto a ridge.

Above - John, Martin and Rik on the ridge

Above - On the ridge - John, Rik, Steffy and Su Li

Above - Rik heading into the second canyon. This is one we had found on an earlier trip. On that occasion we had climbed up from the bottom - and been able to climb up all the drops.