GREAT UNCLE GEORGE’S CANYON – DECEMBER 2014
I’d recently picked up the 5th edition of Canyons Near Sydney and was keen to do some of the previously unpublished canyons, I had a free day, Wentworth Falls is “relatively” close to home and the weather was good so decided to give Great Uncle George a go.
Steve R (who I persuaded to lead the trip), Theo, Trish N, Jason S and Denise W joined me. We positioned one vehicle at the end and then drove around to the start according to 
the track notes. The notes are a bit ambiguous and there look to be a couple of ways to get to the waterfall, the way we went wasn’t good and you felt like you were going through private property and was very scrubby, there’s obviously a better way.
We found the set of old steps that go down to the base of the waterfall (you can therefore avoid the first abseil) and made our way to the top of the waterfall and did the first pitch (approx. 18m). From there we headed downstream to a nice cascade, approx. 5m with convenient steps in it, if the creek was dry, this could be down-climbed with the aid of a handline.
Shortly after this there were 3 more pitches, all quite short (3 – 4m) some with tricky starts. One could be down-climbed if you wanted, two end in a pool and if you have a strong party (and you don’t weigh much), you can zip-line it to avoid getting wet.
There’s a compulsory 10m swim and a few more swims that we discovered, would be hard to skirt around them.
To this point the creek was a true canyon, constricted and very pretty. After the last abseil though, the creek opened out and we had about 2.5k to walk down to the junction of Bedford Creek. This was a little tedious as the rocks were quite slippery. At Bedford Creek we turned left (north) heading upstream. We stayed high on the right side near the cliffline initially but then were forced down into the creek, crossed it, stayed high on the left side and then were forced to cross it again. After roughly 100 – 200m We again accessed the base of the cliff-line and started looking for a ramp up (our exit point). There were two options, Theo and Jason taking the first and the rest of us taking the second which didn’t look as sketchy. The exit is basically straight up, using trees as hand-holds and when you reach the top of the spur there is an old fire trail heading back to Genevieve Road. From car to car it took us 7 hours, but we weren’t rushing.
Whilst the canyon section was nice, the creek wouldn’t have been as tedious or tiring if it had been half as long, as creeks go though, it was very pretty. Very easy walk in and out although no tracks which is probably why it doesn’t seem to be well used, there were no wear marks on the rocks, and the slings were minimal. If the weather had been warmer, wet suits wouldn’t have been needed as the swims are quite short. It was a nice canyon but with that long creek walk, one that I wont be rushing back to!