04/12/2004 - report - photos - Claustral Canyon track notes
Participants: Tom Brennan, Gill Fowler, David Noble, Chris Collier, Stacey Ly, Clare Ly, Luisa Ngeow, Sarah Truscott, James Bevan, Tim
Meeting most of the group at the North Richmond bakery, we laid in supplies and then
headed to the Tomah South carpark where James and Sarah were waiting for us. We sorted
ourselves out and were away by about 10:40am, with one group in front of us already in
their wetsuits! A short way down the track, it turned out that Clare was short one
wetsuit, and Gill had a couple of spares, so they went for a jog back to the cars.
Picking our way down the eroded entry track, we dropped into the creek and wandered along
through a few short canyon sections and little climb downs to the first pool. After
suiting up and getting wet, we negotiated the first tricky climb down. There were a few
interesting manoeuvres on this, and at least one sore hand afterwards.
Descending to the abseils, we waited a bit for the group in front of us to clear, and then
got ropes set up on all three drops. Even with the ten of us, we proceeded through the
Black Hole of Calcutta pretty quickly. There wasn't too much water going over any of the
falls, so they were reasonably straightforward abseils. The sun was fairly high in the
sky, so the colours on the walls were excellent, particularly the in the first abseil.
The long constriction was also excellent with the sunbeams lighting up the chambers. The
paparazzi were out in full force, digital cameras snapping away. I almost fell into the
water carrying my camera across a pool. In the middle of the constriction, we came across
a Broad Headed Snake (Hoplocephalus bungaroides). The poor creature probably didn't know
what hit it, but it was the star of the show for a while.
After exiting the constriction, we wandered down an overhang where Dave had a small fire
going and we settled down for lunch. Our warm day hadn't quite eventuated, so we moved off
fairly quickly after lunch. There were a few more tricky drops to negotiate. Clare managed
to get her foot jammed in one of them, which was a bit awkward, and had to remove one of
her volleys to get free.
In the last section of the canyon we came across what appeared to be a Diamond Python
(Morelia spilota spilota). Some of us spent fifteen minutes watching the snake climb a
very slippery steep rock wall. We didn't think it would be able to make it, but when we
left, it looked like it was past the crux.
The walk out was quite pleasant, as the weather had gone overcast, and seemed to pass
quite quickly. We stopped at a couple of places to look at aboriginal sharpening grooves.
Most people headed back to Sydney while Gill and I went to Mt Wilson for some more
canyoning on Sunday. Another excellent day's canyoning.