05/12/2004 - report - photos - Geronimo Canyon track notes

Participants: Tom Brennan, Rachel Grindlay, Lisa McGinnigle, Gill Fowler

After finishing our trip down Claustral, we headed to Mt Wilson for the OzCanyons get together. We got to the campground around 7:30pm after a latish start/finish in Claustral. I didn't see anyone I recognised, and couldn't see an obvious group of OzCanyoners so we set up camp and had a fire.

Later on I heard some guys talking across the road that sounded like OzCanyoners, so wandered over - Rowan, Joe, Dave, Rob, Daryl - and chatted for a while. Christian arrived at 2am well after everyone else was in bed, but caught up with him in the morning.

Lisa and Rachel arrived a bit before 9am, so we headed off for a latish start to Geronimo. We passed a group of ten heading along the ridge, but on a vague track on the left hand side, rather than on top?! Not sure whether it went anywhere - we passed them, and then decided to regain the ridge, which was much easier going. Last we saw of them, they were still traversing down lower.

There were at least two groups in front of us (including Rowan/Christian's), but we only saw them at the first abseil. A storm passed overhead, and we got rather nervous when there was a huge clap of thunder directly above the canyon that reverberated in the narrow confines. It rained a bit, and just as we left the last abseil, we bumped into a group that was just abseiling in below us, from the ridge. They had missed the canyon completely.

Now, I can't talk too much as our group did exactly the same thing back on my first attempt at an abseil canyon ... in exactly the same place in Geronimo. I'm a little more experienced now, but I've been very careful on the two occasions I've visited the canyon since. But this was the second time one of these guys had done the same thing in Geronimo! Bizarre.

It rained all the way back to the cars, so most of us just walked out in wetsuits, which was quite pleasant.

We bumped in to Christian again driving past just as we were packing up. We stopped in Richmond and I had some very ordinary chips from the Big Red Hen. Give that one a miss next time!