Tiger Snake Canyon

I had planned to do Heart Attack, but I had some reservations since I hadn't done it before. The track notes said "deep wades" or "wades" so I wasn't sure just how wet this meant. When Jonathan told me he had a few beginners coming, I thought the better of it and reverted to Tiger Snake, which I felt we could do comfortably.

It rained all the way from Richmond to well out along the Glowworm Tunnel Rd. Just as I thought we'd be canyoning wet, it fined up and there was no rain at all at the Old Coach Rd car park.

Given that not everyone had abseiled before, we downclimbed the first tricky drop. I didn't think it was best first abseil! Everyone managed to get down OK. We did two abseils in the top section - the 5m one from logs and the big overhang at the end - which were both pretty good abseils for beginners, all things considered.

Since I had done the canyon only last week, I decided we'd do the abseil into the bottom section from up on top. After (deliberately) choosing the most difficult way to get up onto the ledges above the canyon, we walked along to the bridge. There were a couple of different places to choose to abseil from. We chose the most obvious. It was quite a spectacular drop - 25m down between the canyon walls. I was sorry I'd sent my camera down earlier.

We spent some time scrambling up and down the canyon. Jonathan climbed up onto the arch just upstream from the drop - and then took ages to get back down again after trying what must have been twenty different positions.

After exiting, we found the cave where the creek goes underground. After a bit of exploration we all scrambled through the squeeze section and found some glowworms.

By this stage it was pretty late, so we climbed up to the top of the ridge and had lunch on the first pagoda that you climb. We didn't hit the fire trail until after sunset and it was pretty dark by the time we made it back to the car for the long haul to Sydney. It pretty much started to rain immediately we got back to the Glowworm Tunnel Rd, and continued all the way back to Sydney. So we had chosen an excellent spot for a good day's canyoning!