Nobody had slept in or ended their safety spiel by begging for food, so we felt unusually professional as we locked the cars at a respectable hour and bundled down the footpad into Mistake Ravine. Mistake and then the upper parts of Ranon are flat with high ferny walls – one of the more pleasant canyons in the mountains. There were…
We met in Blackheath at a respectable Thursday morning hour and piled into the one car for the drive to Kanangra-Boyd NP. Despite the top temps forecast of 26 degrees, simply walking in the sun was enough to make this temp pale in comparison, and before long we were sweating on the hour walk down to the Kowmung. We ate…
This was the inaugural Wollongambe1 trip for myself and Robert, and we were really blessed with the most awesome day. Tony and Robert had enjoyed camping over at Cathedral of Ferns Reserve after having done Geronimo the day after so their bright eyed enthusiasm was almost harmful to my bleary eyes. This is…
We could not have been blessed with better water for this trip – mild temperatures easy to cope with during the sections of walking, great little puffy clouds for photography, blue skies, from start to finish it was just superb. It was a rare day too when the clarity of the skies was awesome – no smog! I couldn’t wait to get some photos. Tony and…
The aim of the trip was to see how far we could get down the Grose River in three days. The short version is: not as far as we hoped. We started out well. Catching the 07.23 train, we used Katoomba cabs to save the 8k hike out to Perrys Lookdown, the shortest route to the Bluegum Forest. We started…
This trip report is in two parts. See Part 1: the Grand Canyon on Saturday morning This year’s Christmas Dinner Walk was a little quieter than in recent years, a relaxing gathering by the river of some 18-20 people, some new faces but a group otherwise comprising almost entirely of Christmas Dinner Walk veterans. My group…
The party of 6 prospective canyoners assembled at Neates Glen car park on a mild and sunny December morning. All in the party except for myself were pretty much beginners to canyoning. So after the pre-canyon gear check we headed down the well-made walking track until we reached a small cliff where we could setup ropes for an abseil lesson. I gave…
An absolutely straightforward trip through Fortress. We met for breakfast in Leura at a leisurely 9.30 and hit the trail about 10.45. The weather was perfect – low 20s and bright sunshine, and the water in the creek was a decent temperature. There is a clear track, as described in Tom Brennan’s notes, all the way to the creek, which took about an hour, where we donned wetsuits and harnesses. After a…
Jack and I carried my 40m & 60m ropes for the trip. We down climbed the first optional abseil and I setup the second abseil that has a bit of an awkward start towards the edge where there are two boulders wedged together to make a narrow overhang abseil or you can use the rocks either side to step your way down. Our next…
https://youtu.be/dpEuvhnYnxM We made it to the mountains early enough to score a prime park and buy three books from some guy selling them out of a trailer near the fire shed, which international students might be interested to know is the Australian retail equivalent of Amazon’s ‘Black Friday’ sale. I’d been…