Party: Chantal Bronkhorst, Mitchell Isaacs
Leader: Mitchell Isaacs
Date: 11/11/2012
Not having been down since the old track was closed, it was nice to return to Claustral, and have to think about the way in and way out!
Our way in involved a short walk to a very pleasant fern filled gully to enter the Canyon, with blue skies and a cool breeze.
The canyon itself was fantastic as usual, with a few things that stood out to me:
- the water level in most of the pools is much lower than previously – similar to many canyons since the rain over the past year or 2 has flushed out a lot of debris
- A lot of bolting action has occurred. Mostly unwarranted, over the top, and often unhelpful. These new anchors are going to require some careful inspection in coming years if they are to remain safe – largely due to mis-matching of metals causing accelerated corrosion in a wet environment
- there was an abandoned rope hanging down just out of reach above the keyhole. I’d love to hear the story behind this if anyone knows!
- There was a fair bit of debris – fallen trees, and the occasional large boulder
We climbed out of the canyon via the usual Rainbow Ravine track, and after a pleasant lunch in the sun, we checked out a different route back to the car which turned out to be quite scrubby and slow, before returning to our original entry gully for a quick and easy exit.
Great to get back to the canyon again – and while a fair bit of moss has recovered on top of boulders, it’s clearly starting to get a reasonable amount of use again.
Mitchell