Rachel Grindlay

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…. James was a regular canyoning buddy. But since 2012 we’ve averaged less than a trip a year with him (the last one being 2017!!!). So it was with some anticipation that the date which had been locked in months earlier approached. True to our previous attempt at this route the forecast was rubbish. Ok, so maybe not as bad as 2017 where we ended up just doing a tour of waterfalls in the Blue Mountains (I think there had been 100mm of rain). This time it had rained for the three days leading up to the trip, and the forecast for Sunday was for more rain, but nothing too serious – though I was less than impressed when I checked the forecast early on Saturday morning to find a possible severe thunderstorm had crept into late Saturday.

Much to my relief James had volunteered his 4WD as transport for the weekend. We negotiated the road without any issue and it wasn’t long before we’d made our way into our creek system. Given the bush was wet and it was drizzling I suggested we put the wetsuits on as soon as it looked like we were going to be pushing through ferns. It wasn’t long before we were chest-deep, and we were in and out of the water for the rest of the day.

The guys went off to look up a side canyon while I decided to continue downstream to an overhang. Unfortunately in my way was this tiger (?) snake who had no interest in moving. I climbed around him, though by the time the guys came through he had relocated to under the log.

This yabbie appeared to have been caught in the flood debris (of which there was a lot). I feel like there’s a funny caption just waiting to be written – it just hasn’t come to mind yet.

Despite the short distance we were intending to cover it took us all day. Admittedly there was a lot of photo-faffing, and James did spend a lot of time waiting for me and Tom… We didn’t emerge into a cave (was it our intended one??) until after 4:30pm. There had been some talk of doing another canyon that afternoon, but not with a 4:30pm arrival – there was port to drink and pistachios/biltong/cheese to eat!

Based on Tom’s underselling of the camp cave and the brief look at the photos from his previous trips I had a pretty low expectation of our intended overnight location.

Fortunately it ended up being very large and well protected (if not overly flat) as a severe thunderstorm came through around 8pm. There was at least one lightning strike where the thunder was almost instantaneous! We were very glad to be sheltered from the storm and well above the creek. After the rain had settled down we went down and checked out the creek level – it was definitely up since we’d cleaned out our shoes earlier in the evening.

The followers had mutinied and decided on a revised route for day 2. Tom our leader was helpless in the face of the overthrow. After an excellent nights sleep (with no mosquitoes – we didn’t end up using the net despite putting it up) we were off to find our next canyon at 8:20am the next morning. An hour later we dropped into the creek just as the canyon started. And an impressive start it was!

We got back to the cave in time for an early lunch. Packing up we repeated our route from the morning before heading across the ridges and dropping into yesterday’s creek.

From there we took a side-creek we hadn’t explored the day before which was pretty impressive.

Then it was time to head for the cars. The weather had packed it in by then and we walked in light mizzle for most of the exit.

Back at the cars at 4:30pm was a pretty respectable time to end the day. An excellent weekend, despite the weather, hopefully not another 3 years before we have the opportunity to go canyoning with James again!