Date: 6+7/6/2026
Trip leader: Adam H
Party: Elias, Ilana, Jeff, Terry, Grace T, Sabs
With canyon season “over”, we were keen to get out to Kanangra and tick off some of the easier canyons out there. With the canyons being much more open and thus warmer than the slot canyons in the rest of the Blue Mountains, they are much more suitable for a brisk June weekend.
We each honed in on the traditional pre-PBT campsite at differing times the night before, experiencing a cold Kanangra night before our upcoming freezefest.
Day 1 – Box Creek
My car reported a temperature of 1 degree as I deiced the windscreen and wound down the windows to blast tai chi music that would wake up the troop. It was 6:30AM and absolutely freezing, weirdly it did not seem to be the right weather for canyoning. I had promised cold and it was certainly cold but I was questioning whether it was a good idea to head out and start swimming.
By 8am it had warmed up enough and we were on our way down the Kowmung River Fire Trail to the entry of Box Creek. It was there we encountered P1 of the canyon entry; a tree had fallen across the road.
It’s a wonder when this tree actually fell, being a long weekend surely at least some 4WDers had been through to Dingo Dell the day before, but it was not a particularly windy night so it would’ve been a rather spontaneous fall. Grace saved the day by producing a small gardening pruning saw intended for a much smaller tree, but nothing would stop us from clearing the fire trail of this now-dead tree.
With taking turns at the sawing effort, it took us about 10 minutes to get through the tree from various angles and to lob it out of the way. We discussed the impact of this move, though if it were not for us doing it, someone almost certainly would later that day and after all it was blocking a fire trail…
We hit the top of Box Creek just before 10am and it had thankfully warmed up quite a bit to an estimated 10 degrees, though we had a bit of sun to keep us going. It was interesting to see everyone’s wetsuit setups for this unreasonably cold canyoning day, there was everything from proper European canyoning suits through to just stacking two 3mm wetsuits.
I went down first and stopped at the edge to report that the deep shaded pool below did in fact look cold.
Box Creek is not really a canyon at all but instead a few waterfalls down granite slabs. Despite most abseils ending in swims, it was still a good winter trip as we could all lizard in the sun between pitches.
Abseiling down Box Creek is certainly not necessary, you could find a way down every pitch, but what’s the point of “canyoning” in winter if you’re going to be warm. Some aimed to avoid the flow, others (and by others I mean just me) wanted the full brunt of it and took the wettest line possible down each abseil. Swims were unavoidable though, and everyone was thankful for their wetsuit setups.
With SUBW’s entire stock of rope on our trip, and many budding canyon leaders, we actually made it down the 8 abseils that we did fairly quickly. Abseiling is certainly not necessary, you could find a way down every pitch but what’s the point of canyoning in winter if you’re not going to head straight down the flow and get wet.
Shivering was somehow minimal and the sun made a big difference in comfort levels. Would not recommend on a cloudy winter day.
The published exit would have us walk back up Box Creek and out the way we came, though from a convergence of miscommunication, a bit of pythagora’s (hypotenuse < the sum of the other two sides), and a sense of adventure, we ended up just bushbashing up to the ridge.
We drove back to camp with only a couple of wild pigs running across the road and I rigged a 22kN clothesline for us to dry our stuff.
With time left in the day, we headed out to Kanangra Walls for sunset cabaret (beers while a lyrebird ran through some excellent mimicry).
Day 2 – Dione Dell
We woke up fairly late on day 2 to everything on the clothes line being frozen. Sabs drove in to join us at 2am and reported seeing -2 on his dashboard. It was definitely a cold night, but we were still set to go for another canyon.
The usual “who’s taking what rope” discussion was headed by my innate desire to head down the wet line of Dione Dell. Shockingly not many were keen and I was coming to terms with heading down solo with my own rope. Things had warmed up and our wetsuits thawed by the time we faffed about at the entry and were into the first drop. I rigged the first pitch with a biner block expecting to be the only one down but Sabs soon conceded defeat to my pestering and opted to come down the flow with me.
There was less sun than I was hoping for, but it was another warmish day with temps definitely above 10 degrees. The first two pitches of the wet line were very tame and there was enough creek walking between abseils to warm us up after our swims. This massively helped my quest to go down the wettest line possible, after all I came here to freeze.
While Sabs and I were the only ones to do all wet, lots did a mix of dry and wet pitches. On P4, Ilana jumped on rope, got to the edge and decided it wasn’t her cup of tea. Jeff jumped on next, sat on the edge for about 2 minutes contemplating before noping out and also heading for the dry side. This made me a little nervous for what was actually down there as I hadn’t seen it and couldn’t head down first as the anchor manager. They hadn’t quite picked up the landing spot so were understandably apprehensive of heading down. A bit of reshuffling had Sabs down first and Jeff came back to enjoy the flow next. This bit of faffing ended up being quite handy as a biner block left in the dry group’s rope got stuck in a crack on pulldown and since I was still up there amid the tomfoolery, I was able to free it from above for them.
With some wetter than others but all having enjoyed the canyon, we had a late lunch at the top of Margeret Falls before commencing the walk out. Nobody ended up being too cold which was awesome from the perspective of our organs.
We were treated to a rather distinct track up to Pindar Top and then across the plateau back to our cars. Of course this involved an obligatory stop at the lovely Grotto of Uranus.
Once we were on the plateau the views were excellent and it makes the walk out worth the trip in its own right. It is criminal that Dione Dell is rated lower than Fortress on Ropewiki, it is truly an underrated trip especially as a winter trip with the right wetsuit and/or taking the dry lines.
Dinner and a gear reshuffle at the Hampton Halfway Hotel marked the end of our weekend of winter festivities.
All in all a wonderful weekend with wonderful company albeit a little cold at times. Thanks to all who joined me on this cold freezefest and especially Sabs for joining me on the Dione wet line. 😉
Photos by everyone
