Blue Mountains Canyoning

A fine and sunny day to start with for a change for one of my canyoning trips! After a short car shuffle, we took a different way into the creek than I had used previously, which had some issues with private property. We ended up on top of a cliff with slings, but an uncertain length drop. As it turned out, the ropes just reached, with a lovely descent beside a large waterfall. There were old stone stairs leading out of the amphitheatre, but we had another group behind us so no time to investigate.

The next abseil was down a cascade into a large amphitheatre. It was a bit of a walk to morning tea, at the start of the first true canyon section, where some people wetsuited up. I opted to go without, and the water temperature was not too bad. Certainly a couple of degrees warmer than a month ago!

There were a couple of tricky abseils and some more sections of canyon before the creek opened out. I had thought there might be another abseil and swim, but we never found them!

Then there was a long section of creek walking to the exit. The creek is a beautiful upper mountains creek, with mostly easy open walking through rainforest. I neglected to look at the map before exiting, and we were halfway up the ridge before Brendon pointed out that we needed to go upstream for a couple of hundred metres to the next junction. Back down to the creek we went, and as we headed up to the junction, we spotted a large structure in the creek. Having come across the occasional marijuana plantation in the bush, I was somewhat nervous approaching it. However, it looked like some kind of bush camp, but with no current inhabitants. We quickly moved on, found a pass out, and after a bit of scrub were on the fire trail for the short walk back to the cars.

An excellent early season canyon.