Participants: Rachel Grindlay, Caoimhin Ardren, Steve Thomsen
I got a text message from Caoimhin at 5:30pm on Friday night saying it was bucketing down in Bathurst and the canyon may be at risk. I went home and checked the radar images, I was hopeful the worst of the storm had missed the area as there wasn't much rain around the Jenolan area. You never know till you go, so I still loaded up all my gear and staggered down to the station to meet Caoimhin on the train after his plane eventually arrived in Sydney (after detouring to avoid the storm front). Steve picked us up from Wahroonga, I was going to ask Caoimhin if we were leaving directly from the station, but decided it was too unlikely and refrained from asking. After Caoimhin and Steve had some food, finalised packing, we picked up a spare helmet and then went and did food shopping we were finally ready to leave. It was only 10pm. Steve did a mammoth effort with the driving, getting us the whole way to Kanangra without a break. We were all pretty glad to arrive at the Boyd River camp site just before 1am. (Perhaps the people we ended up camping next to weren't so glad!)
The alarm went off all too early at 6am. I was surprised at how dark it still was. We had breakfast and got packed then drove down the Kanangra Walls car park. Unsurprisingly, at just after 7:15am, we were the only ones there! Caoimhin had promised us a 10minute walk to the top of Kanangra Main so off we set. There were ominous puddles lurking on the road and the first creek we reached was significantly higher than usual, the grass 10 cm below the current water level. Optimistically we headed on, it was a very long 10 minutes, though the magnificent views we got of the valley with the early morning mist more than made up for it. After more like an hour of walking we got to the top of Kanangra Main. Wow. There was quite a lot of water going over it, but not enough for us to immediately decide to abandon the trip. We had a look down the falls to the valley below, the white foam of the river glared up at us. Minutes of indecision followed. Eventually we decided that Caoimhin could get a better view if he went down to the ledge 10m below the top. So he rapped down, reluctantly taking one of my prussik loops with him. With the noise from the water flow I didn't really know what was going on. Steve soon set up a top belay and I gathered whatever had been seen down there was not good. Caoimhin had obviously decided to climb back up, however after some time Steve ended up hauling him the final few metres. So that was it, decision made, too much water to risk it. It was a real shame since it was a beautiful day but better a less exciting day and coming out alive!
Now the decision was what to do instead. While we were mulling this over another party appeared at the top of the first small waterfall. One of them already completely saturated. They were obviously keen and started suiting up. We scrambled up and as we passed were approached by the older (presumably) leader of the group. (The remainder of the group were boys in their teens). He asked our opinion and so we told him what we were up to. I suspect they decided to abort as well, since we didn't see any signs of them abseiling when we stopped at the lookout on the way out. The view from the lookout about half way back was spectacular. From that distance things didn't look quite so threatening, nevertheless decision had been made, so we continued back to the car. Arriving back at 10:30am
We had contemplated walking out to Cloudmaker however given the temperature we decided it would be fairly unpleasant. Caoimhin and I had both done Dione Dell and Kalang Falls before so weren't particularly interested in either. However, given the lack of other options, we settled on Dione Dell. We drove up to the firetrail opposite the entrance path and set off. Soon we were walking along the cool banks of the creek. Arriving at the first abseil we were impressed at the amount of water and glad we didn't have to abseil through it. We were quickly down and headed off down to the next one. At the second abseil Caoimhin was hunting around for the "usual" anchor on the left hand side of falls. I remembered from my last visit that the anchor was now a dead tree half way down the drop. I couldn't remember what we had rapped off last time but a bright red sling stuck out on the tree on the right hand side. Heading over to it we realised it was going to be an easy scramble down so we did that instead.
We reached the next abseil and I immediately recognised the down-climb required to get to the anchor point. On my previous visit I had hated the down-climb and was quite nervous on the anchor ledge. No such problems this time, I don't what I had been worried about! At the bottom there is a section of the pool to wade through (with the danger of slipping and going swimming if you are not careful). I thought this was the last abseil so advised Steve that he didn't need his harness anymore. We all made it across reasonably dry and then were back off down the creek. Suddenly I was at the top of another abseil... not what I was expecting. So we had to put our harnesses back on, but another straight-forward rap later we were at the bottom. Now we just had to wander down the creek until we could wander no more (unless one had a 110m rope on them). I was impressed by the amount of debris strewn around the creek. It appeared there had been quite a torrent of water through, bushes up to my waist had leaves caught up in their upper reaches.
On reaching the top of Margaret Falls we scrambled down to the edge and had a swim in the pool. After lunch Steven had an hour and a half nap, while Caoimhin and I just tried to avoid the leech that wouldn't leave us alone. After our siestas we headed out, getting back to the car around 5pm.
Steve had never been to Kanangra before so we decided we had to take him out to the lookout. Soon we were back at the car park and walking out to the look out. Then we headed out on the plateau. Impressive views of Kanangra and Kalang Falls awaited us. When I had last been out here (Oct 06) you could barely make Kanangra out as there was so little flow. There was no missing it as the large gushes of water raced over the edge. It looked more threatening at this distance than it had from our small lookout earlier in the day. After taking in the views we headed back to the car and camp. The end of a pleasant, if not quite as planned, day.