And then I was “grounded”

BLUE MOUNTAINS – 22 March 2020
After our Cerberus walk there was much debate about what we’d do on the Sunday.  We opted for Centennial Glen – and have to say that it was the highlight of the weekend, who would have thought that there’d be such a nice 1/2 day trip so close to civilisation?

With all the canyons closed over the summer period, everyone was casting around for something to do, and (lucky for us), Fat Canyoners had posted this trip on their blog.  I wasn’t expecting a fabulous trip, but this definitely surpassed my expectations.

We started off the tourist track to Centennial Glen, and dropped down into the creek.

Almost straight away we were seeing some canyon formation.

Then the creek opened out a bit.

With the occasional wade – we had wetsuits but didn’t bother to put them on – that would come back and bite us later on. Shortly after this we were at our first abseil.

Trish on the first abseil – note the rope is up at the waterfall and in a notch beside a rock.

Me on the abseil – I managed to find a big stick so that I could make sure that the rope didn’t slip into the notch (would have been a nasty pull down with chances of rope jamming – I managed to position the rope on the rock) – this meant that when I abseiled down I was in the full flow of the water – was freezing! (Photo: John G)

The bottom of the abseil.

I wasn’t keen to get wet again in this small pool, John managed to bridge it with his long legs.

I tried the downward dog approach, but ended up in the pool anyway. (Photo: John G)

Penny went for the “get completely wet” aproach (Photo: John G)

Next we had the log challenge, Trish got half way along and then dropped into the pool.

Penny did my approach, walked down initially with her back to the wall, then turned around and walked the rest of the way hugging the cliff.

Within the blink of an eye we were at our final abseil, and what a cracker it was.

Was really, really slippery, Penny slipped and decided sliding down on her knees was the best bet.

Abseil looked great didn’t it, we anchored our ropes off the tourist track hand rail! By now the wind is whipping up the valley and it was absolutely freezing, I should have had my wetsuit on, if I had, I would have done this 2 or 3 times, it was such a good abseil (Photo:  John G).

This was the end of the canyon, we simply walked out on the tourist track … and this was problematic.  You know that we’d said we’d do social distancing – well this was absolutely impossible on the tourist track.  Look at where I’m standing above, not only is there a metal rail for hand born viruses to attach to, but the track is only 1m wide, and we had people passing us on this track for the whole time we were abseiling here.  For those who think it’s ok to go out on a tourist track for “exercise” get real – you absolutely cannot do social distancing on a tourist track.

As we were walking out on the track, we passed the small waterfall that we walked under to get into the creek.  More Unfinished Business – when all this is over, we’ll be back to go into the creek higher up and abseil this little beauty!

Gotta go back and do this.

Was a great weekend, little did we realise that this would be our last trip out for many months.  On the 29th March, our PM gave us the news that we were in virtual Lock Down – it sort of snuck up on us. I was watching the Press Conference with my son’s family and as soon as the PM said “over 70s with underlying health issues should stay at home” my son grounded me – maybe I shouldn’t have grounded him so much when he was a teenager.

So, on our last canyon trip for quite some time, I want to thank John G for suggesting these two trips and Trish and Penny for coming along for the ride.  See you on the other side of the Lock Down!