COLO RIVER LILOING – JANUARY 2014
Grassy Hill Fire Trail > Canoe Creek > Colo River > Bob Turner’s Track
Back in 2005 John L’E, Brian Corlis (of Colo River Passes and Routes fame), Jenny V and I had liloed the Colo between Boxing Day and New Years Day. It was a fabulous trip and I wanted to take some friends to repeat the experience (share the love as Cathy B would say). I didn’t check the River height, and in fact if I had it wouldn’t have meant anything as I had nothing for comparison, but as it turned out, a bit more water would have been nice.
In preparation, I organised a day on Ourimbah Creek to make sure everyone was aware of what liloing involved. We spent a couple of hours getting the hang of it, and making sure that they knew how to waterproof their packs etc.
Klaus, Verena, Annie B, Jim M, Trish M and Greg G joined Jeff and me for the trip and we started out on Boxing Day. We left a vehicle at Bob Turners Track where we would exit and set off for the Grassy Hill Fire Trail. It’s a pretty straight forward walk from there, straight down the Canoe Creek track (a little vague in spots but no real problem). We were down at the Colo by morning tea and blew up our lilos. Based on previous experience, I’d made sure that everyone had glued sacrificial patches onto the corners of their lilos, top and bottom, this way we’d avoid wearing out the corners and getting slow leaks. I had extra patch material and some wetsuit glue just in case, plus extra plugs, although a stick will do the same job! I had also bought a lot of “paddle gloves”, webbed gloves which made the paddling a lot faster and about a metre of garden hose – this could be used as a breathing tube if someone got caught under a rock (I know, highly unlikely but you just never know!). There’s an art to paddling a lilo, you have to do deep long sweeps with your arms, paddling backwards is quicker, but you obviously can’t see where you’re going. Paddling forward is nice for a change. Of course, getting into fast water is best of all!
A four day trip down the Colo isn’t to be attempted without much planning. There are only a few exit routes, and it’s important to know where they are, we had Brian’s sketch maps just in case.
We camped the first night at Main Creek, the second at the junction with Wollangambe River and the third night at Kings Rapids. Every time I go down to the Colo, the sand banks have changed, so our campsites at the Wollangambe and Kings Rapids were smaller than the last time I’d been there, sand washed away in floods over the years, then the next time you go back, there’s an enormous sand bank there.
The river level was way lower than I’d experienced the first time there, it must have been “just right”, as the rapids were safe, but also had some excitement. This time there wasn’t enough water to make the rapids fun, and we spent most of our time walking across boulders and rocks dragging the bloody lilos! This wouldn’t have been a problem except one of our party wasn’t adept at rock hopping, so he couldn’t carry his lilo, which meant that I did those sections twice, taking my stuff through, then going back and taking his lilo so that he had two hands to steady himself over the rocks and boulders.
We were hoping that the flow in the river would increase substantially when we got to the Wollangambe, it was a little better but still not great. Klaus and Trish spent a lot of time in the Wollangambe shooting the rapids. We also found a “Bucky Beaver” blow up children’s toy, which we took along with us (spare flotation device?). Each night we made a few lilo repairs as we sat around the fire, the benefit of a lilo too is that you can sleep on it at night! Although it needs to be dried out.
There were times that we chose to go through rapids and other times when we sussed them out and determined that it was just too dangerous, King Rapids was one of those “too dangerous” sections. We camped on the bank at the Rapids and spent a lot of time in some of the spa pools, and making our way across to the other side and jumping in from one of the rocks (into the deep part of the river), Klaus particularly liked this part and did a few jumps, if you jumped into the fast flowing section, you were able to float a little ways downstream..
At one set of rapids we almost lost Annie (would have been a case for the section of hose!) but thanks to some swift movement by Jeff, disaster was averted, that really was the only sketchy part of the trip!
We had food galore, a lot of it coming out of Greg’s pack, he seemed to have a never ending supply and shared it with us. At Kings Rapids we were having apple cake cooked over the fire, Klaus set up a rotisserie so that we didn’t have to hold the billy on the fire for long stretches, this didn’t help the apple cake though, burned in the billy which unfortunately had to be thrown out at the end of the trip, it would never be the same again.
The section from King Rapids down to Bob Turner’s Track is probably the least interesting section of the river, long pools, and no banks to climb out on for a rest or lunch, we arrived at Bob Turners and had lunch there. Then it was a matter of drying out the lilos as best we could and then the climb out.
At the top, we waited while the other vehicles were retrieved from Grassy Hill (probably an hour at the most), it was disappointing to be back in civilisation, our adventure coming to an end. As Trish wrote in the BWOC trip report, “It wasn’t an easy trip, but as Greg said at the end of it, If I’d known what I was in for I wouldn’t have come, so I would have missed a great trip!” It’s the old story, no pain no gain but it’s always worth it!