[SUBW-A] Trip Report - Canyoning 17/18 Aug 02

[David Noble]

Trip Report - Canyoning 17/18 Aug 02

Two separate trips:

Saturday - Canyon Exploration

Party - Dave, Rik and Jodie

We went to the end of a fire trail in the Northern Blue Mts then did a 
few kms of roadbashing (on the closed off section of the fire trail) and 
headed out along a very scrubby ridge. Near the end of this ridge, we 
stopped for lunch and then dropped off (via a long abseil) into a 
scrubby creek. We then bashed our way upstream looking for a sidecreek 
that we thought may be canyon. We located the creek and sure enough it 
was a canyon. We wedged a log to allow us to climb up the lower 
waterfall and could then scramble upstream - but were blocked by another 
waterfall further up.

We left that creek and checked out another creek and found a nice benign 
looking section of canyon. We could easily climb up a few waterfalls and 
made our way upstream with high hopes. However, we found ourselves faced 
with wading through a deep icy looking pool. The weather was quite cold 
and the time was getting on so we forced a pass up the side of the 
canyon and made our way back along another very scrubby ridge back to 
the fire road. Then it was a 7km brisk walk back to the car.

We vowed to return to fully explore these canyon at a later (and warmer) 
date.

On the way back down the mountains we stopped for dinner at the 
Gardeners Inn at Blackheath (recommended). We farewelled Rik, who is 
leaving for three weeks canyoning in Spain.

I stayed up the mountains for a party and there met up with Dave Forbes 
and Martin Pfeil.

Sunday

Party - Dave N, Dave F, Martin, Zenek and Alex.

Zenek and Alex met us on the Bell Rd on Sunday morning. We planned to 
have a look at Oronga Creek, which none of us had visited before. We 
headed into the upper part of the west branch, which was a bit scrubby 
at first, but we made fast progress downstream. We were hoping to find 
some canyon - but it was not till very close to the junction with the 
east branch that we came across a short section of low quality canyon. 
The creek then dropped through boulders and another short section of 
canyon. It was a bit tricky to climb into this (via a convenient tree 
pass) and avoid getting wet. Most of the party continued down to the 
Grose Wall where the creek tumbled over a high waterfall. We scrambled 
back up the creek to the junction and continued up the east branch a few 
hundred metres before scrambling out. We had  lunch on a nice ledge and 
then had a short walk back to the cars.

We visited the Kurrajong Hotel on the way back to town.

More of a bushwalk than a canyoning trip.

Dave Noble

--------------------------------------------------------
David Noble
dnoble at ozemail.com.au
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~dnoble