EXPLORATORY MULTI PITCH ABSEIL – CAMP CAVE CREEK – APRIL 2006
(AKA Waterfall Creek). This was a Lindsay B idea and Peter T and I thought it was worth a shot, it was on the Kings Tableland so we could go up there for just the day. There were a scant two lines of information on this canyon in the guide book, so it was well and truly exploratory. We took 2 vehicles and did a long car shuffle, but we’d appreciate it at the end of the day. And yes, if you need to, I reckon a person could chew their way through it, wouldn’t be tasty though.
Starting around 9am, in typical Lindsay fashion, we spent a lot of time poking around looking for the part of the creek that was “just right”, found ourselves in a steep gully, retreated from it, cut back around a cliff line and then a short climb and we were in the creek, probably much higher up in the creek than we needed to be, but with 2 lines of information, you get that.
At around 1pm we were at the cliff edge of Kedumba Walls, and we could roughly see where the canyon ended. “Geez” says Peter “I reckon we’ll be back in time for afternoon tea at this rate, might even have time to catch the mountain gear shops before they close” famous last words!
We set the first pitch but it was difficult to see if the rope had bottomed. If it hadn’t it was close, but we joined another rope just to make sure. We abseiled down and then tried to pull the rope down and it wouldn’t budge, even with 3 of us pulling, Peter volunteered to prussic up using his 2 Petzel Shunts and it worked well. He prussiced up the 35m of rope only to discover that the two ropes were sitting just as flat and tidy as could be, the culprit was most likely the joiner knot digging into the dirt. Peter then descended again, this time bringing the knot way down past the edge of the cliff. Down at the bottom we tugged again, and tugged harder, and harder. Wasn’t budging again, none of us, particularly Peter were happy with this. Eventually after much tugging and pulling it moved just a little and then a little more, must have been the most difficult rope pull down any of us had experienced.
There followed another short pitch, and that was followed by a longer one. Again we weren’t sure that the rope reached the bottom, but Lindsay went down. It didn’t, was a few metres too short but as luck would have it he was able to take refuge under a ledge on a nice wide platform. Unfortunately the rest of us on top beside a waterfall couldn’t hear what he was saying down below, but hearing the word “rope”, I abseiled down with another rope and this time we agreed on some whistle signals. Joined the rope and gave the whistle blast, and everyone was eventually down on terra firma.
We moved to the next pitch to the right, sort of long with lots of shelves to stop on. Then there were another couple of short pitches and we were at the point where we had to leave the creek. We knew from the map that there was a well graded road just a few hundred metres away, no problem, but our daylight hours were fast diminishing (who said we’d be out by afternoon tea?).
We started off and then encountered the worst infestation of lawyer vine that I’ve ever come across, we persevered and Peter got out his knife. We could see the road but then I got caught up in lawyer vine so bad that I couldn’t touch the ground, I was trapped, at this point my knife wasn’t so handy and I seriously contemplated chewing my way out of the vines. Eventually I made it out and we were all on the road with just 20 minutes of daylight to spare.
We started up the road, about 5k of very steep uphill, with no respite in gradient, but the fun wasn’t over yet, a cool breeze picked up to chill us! We were back at the car by 8.30pm and then retrieved the second vehicle.
Hard day? Peter T says yes (and he’s tough), I’d agree but only because of the lawyer vine and it was exploratory, we didn’t know what to expect, next time it’ll be a piece of cake! We lost about an hour with the stuck rope and another hour stuffing around looking for the “right” entry, but there were only 3 of us. So if you had more people, it would possibly take about the same amount of time, maybe quicker without stuffing around looking for the right part of the creek, we now know where the entry point is!