Yarramun Canyoning (2016-12-26 to 31) – Part I
After a year off our ‘traditional’ Boxing Day canyoning trip last year it was good that Tom’s body appeared to be sufficiently healthy for us to get back into it this year. We garnered a bit of interest and so on Boxing Day five of us set off into the Wollemi Wilderness.
Tom had already had to do a repack after weighing his pack and deciding 20kg was out of the question – 2kg of gear left on the floor at home – hopefully nothing he would later regret!
Our first couple of hours were on familiar territory and we helped direct another party in the direction of Water Dragon – though after we left them Tom did admit he may have sent them in a bit early. Oops. We continued on, the going on the ridges was pretty easy as the regrowth from the fires was still relatively low. We dropped into a tributary of a tributary which was pretty unpleasant – and a bit of a theme for the trip – many creeks having a lot of fallen timber in them from the fires.

Having a break in a side creek after some scrub bashing. At least the going along the tops was pretty good after fires in recent years.

The tributary we explored was dark and cold. This was at the end of of a tunnel section – before I had to break the spiderweb and disturb the water!

We base camped for two nights, Tom and I took the ‘annex’ around the corner from the main camp cave. We did a bit more excavating after the first night to even up the ground!
On the second afternoon the others opted for a bit of R&R while Tom and I headed back into the main creek. We were looking for passes and options for the coming days. Potentially we were going to have to reverse our route so we spent a fair bit of time assessing whether we could get back up everything (or leaving a rope in place as needed).

Further down the creek we explored a very narrow side creek from the bottom. With a bit of bridging and grunting we got a bit of a way up it.
On day 3 we decided to move camp so with full packs found a pass out onto the tops and headed over the ridge to descend an unknown creek.

Lunch cave in the main creek. Complete with newspaper from 2014 that had (presumably) been left for kindling along with the large pile of firewood. The previous day I found an old torch in another overhang.

After lunch we headed out a somewhat sketchy pass to descend the narrow canyon Tom and I had explored from the bottom on the previous day.
Then we continued down the main creek. We were hoping to find a camp cave further downstream. The creek was slow going with full packs, and some major boulder block-ups which took some time to work out a way through.
While the gorge was magnificent we were all pretty tired by the time we finally found a camp cave. Even better it wasn’t the camp cave we were looking for but a better one! (no hauling up a tree to get to it!)