CANYONING NORTHERN WOLLEMI – APRIL 2016
When Rod S said he was planning a weekend canyoning in the Northern Wollemi, I jumped at the chance to go along. The opportunity to canyon with a couple of canyoning’s legends doesn’t happen very often, they’re very busy so it usually only happens once a year, and we had a great day out doing Middle Earth canyon, an unpublished one.
I drove up on Friday night, arriving very late and woke to an amazing sunrise at the cottage (John G’s photos are fabulous, if I th
ought I could take a photo like this I’d get a better camera!). We all took time over breakfast sitting on the deck, in the sun. Rod, Beth, Andre and I had to attend a memorial service on the Saturday so our canyoning was set for Sunday. We drove out to the start and were ready to walk by about 9.30am. We figured we’d walk down a spur, do a small walk-through canyon (Middle Earth), access our main canyon via a convenient saddle, do that, and then walk downstream a little ways to another canyon which has been used in the past to exit. Sounded easy didn’t it, well, didn’t quite go according to plan.
The scrub on the way down was a little thicker than expected and where we thought we’d just go down a spur, there was a bloody great cliff-line in the way, I guess we could have abseiled past it, but we didn’t think of that at the time, just continued skirting around the contour until we found a route down.
Once down we were walk
ing through lovely stands of Coachwoods with ferns and leaf litter on the ground, really easy walking, and then we came to a small climb down, and then a waterfall, which we couldn’t climb down. There was an old anchor around a tree, so we figured someone had been there before, and so, we put our harnesses on and proceeded to abseil at the side of the waterfall (not a particularly nice one). Well, this was a surprise, we didn’t expect any abseils in this creek!
Not m
uch further along, there was another waterfall, so, down we went again. This was followed by a little creek walking and then a drop (with no anchor in sight), the guys stood around wondering what to do, I just shimmied down the log, little bit of a drop at the bottom, but no big deal, they decided that it looked like the way to go, was ok until Min broke the convenient sapling that you used to balance yourself!
Soon after another abseil, then another, what’s the go? this canyon is definitely bigger than we expected. We had only brought 2 x 40m and 1 x 20m ropes with us, and eventually we came to a pitch that was just a little too long for the 2 x 40m ropes. Fortunately there was a chock stone where we could stand and safely re-rig our descenders to go past the knot in the rope, would have been a pain if that chock stone hadn’t been there.
We finally came to what I think is one of the best abseils I’ve done, it was dark and there was a waterfall that you abseiled beside, John G set up his tripod and you-beaut camera and took some great shots! I had to stay very, very still while he took the shot and all the while the mist is coming across my face and legs, really cool!
I sort of lost count of the number of abseils, am thinking it was around 7, and by the time we got to the saddle that we were going to use to get to the next canyon, we decided that there just weren’t enough daylight hours left, so we walked downstream to find a likely looking exit.
Min took one look up the side of the creek and said that it looked like it would go, he did have to stand on John G’s shoulders to get up one small climb (as I also had to do), so we have named this Cirque de Soleil pass, as you had to be a circus performer to get up the damned thing.
This abseil was interesting, I did it as one pitch, but the guys felt that the pull down wasn’t good so they did it in two stages, the second stage was from a really difficult start over a chock stone. It is way in the back in the dark section, I’m thankful that I didn’t have to do that start, didn’t look at all good!
From the pass it was an easy walk up to the fire trail and back to the cars. Was a long day but fabulous, we’re just going to have to go back next year to do the one we missed (the guys did go and do it the following day after I’d left but Rod assures me we’ll do it again).
(NB: If this were social media, I wouldn’t actually name the canyon that we did, but you’ll note that I wasn’t specific about how we got to where we went. We did what we call an “unpublished” canyon and it is a canyoning ethic that we don’t publish these canyons or how to get to them on social media or the internet.)