Party: Natalie, Leo, Jack, Kosta, Martyn and Tony
Leader: Leo
Date: 12/12/2015
We all meet at 8.15am in Leura. Jack and Tony joined Marty for the drive on Mt Hay fire trail. We left the cars at 8.40am and followed an old fire trail for a while before to go down the ridge. We started the first abseil at 9.15am. Kosta went down first to ridge the second abseil on the right of the tributary that gave us access to Govetts creek.
The first swim came after a few meters of creek walking and two avoided the swim by walking on the right side. The creek was easy to walk and soon we found our first tire. I broke it and folded it into my pack. We continued with a few boulders to manage before the proper canyon started. The only abseil in the creek can be done from both side, the left side require a longer rope. Kosta decided to rig the abseil on the right that went through a hole and I did the left one that also had a hole but it isn’t visible from the top.
The proper canyon started after the abseil and meant we would now have to swim, climb out of a pool, jump and slide many times until the junction with Alpheus, our exit. In the canyon section we found 2 more tires but lost one in a pool just after a jump. It sank to the bottom while the other floated. We had a few more swims and jumps before the end of the canyon. We had an early lunch at the junction and Tony found another tire nearby.
We climbed the 2 pitches with 3 tires. It took a while for everyone to complete them but everyone made it to the top safe.
At the top of Alpheus falls we started reversing the canyon. It consisted of short swims before waterfalls and then short creek walking. We had some great team work to pull and push everyone to climb each waterfall. When the creek became scrubby we climbed the right slope and proceeded with another 2 hand over hand and arrived at the lookout at 15.15pm.
We were back at the car before 4pm with a lot of rubbish. We remove everything we found and we can now say that the creek is clean. Jack and Martyn left while the rest drove to Megalong Valley for the Christmas dinner.
