North Grose Canyoning

Leaving the car, we headed along a series of ridges to a small creek, and dropped in to one of its tributaries, which I thought looked the most promising. After a short scrub bash we reached the main junction without any sign of canyon. However, just after the junction the creek dropped away a few metres into a pool. We scrambled down on a fairly rotten log, and then climbed around the next drop until we could bridge. Just beyond this was an impressive looking slot. I headed down a series of three ledges which dropped into a large chamber, with a couple of big chockstones above us. There was another nice crack which joined the canyon at this point. I called for Matt to abseil down as the next belay looked OK.

The next drop also looked impressive and there was a loud splash as we threw the rope down. There was a large pool at the bottom but some good bridging saved us from getting wet. The abseil continued down to another ledge, which looked like it might be it for the canyon. I had some worries about the pull down, but it came pretty easily. Matt followed, and then belayed me out across a dodgy talus slope to see whether we needed to do one more abseil. It looked all right beyond the thin section, and I belayed Matt across. We then spent the next hour bush bashing through some fairly stiff scrub until we could reach a pass and easy exit.

We met a group in the car park who walked in the area every Friday and chatted to them for a while. Then it was lunch and a bit of a walk back to our car, which was some way along the road. Not a bad little canyon, although a bit of a fight to get out.