During the 2 weeks of hot dry weather preceding this trip I envisaged the shimmering deep pools of Kalang Falls and Dione Dell and how nice it would be to jump into them on a trip after abseiling down dry cliffs in the sunshine. And so this trip was thus conceived. Yet the weather had other ideas and by the time we set off along the track to Kalang Falls on Saturday morning it was cool, grey and heavily overcast with the promise of rain.
Travelling separately in two cars, the party drove out to Newnes on the Friday night of 12 November and on Saturday morning we all met around our breakfast fire. It was shaping up to be a warm weekend so we chose a route into the Red Rocks that incorporated a cool but dry canyon. There had been plenty of recent rain so there was fresh rainwater water to be found high in the Wolgan Capertee divide.
With Fiona bailing out due to too much Saturday night action, the four of us met up on the train to Wentworth Falls where where we started our walk. The first leg of our trip was following down Jamison Creek all the way from the station to the magnificent Wentworth Falls and further down the Slack Stairs and the old Hippocrene Falls track. We left ample time to watch and photograph the stunning waterfalls and finally settled at the Hippocrene Falls for an early lunch and some of us went for a cold swim, too.
This very belated trip report is for completeness of the record, and was a (P)BT as neither the President nor the Vice-President were in attendance! However, the Honorary Junior Vice-President, and a range of ex-presidents were there to help carry on the tradition. Apologies for any poor recollection!
I’ve put the trip report for the beginner canyoning weekend up on the Fat Canyoners Club site. Coming out of the weekend we’ve only had one participant get operated on (that I know of) and have located the one person we lost for the whole weekend, so I can now safely call it a success. For those who missed out on this trip, there will be a similar beginner weekend in the next couple months. As for those who were on this trip, I look forward to seeing you on more trips as the canyoning season gets into full swing.
After a very early Saturday morning departure and a bakery stop in Cooma, we headed up on the Kosciuszko Express, noting the grassy patches near the village and a complete lack of people on the slopes. On the chair up Pete sat next to a ski patrol employee, who out of politeness asked where he was going. Since we hadn’t really discussed it beforehand, Pete said he had no clue, and then promptly managed to get his backpack caught on the lift while unloading! I wonder what the patroller must have been thinking as the attendant stopped the lift and tried to free the bag…
Suboir president Bjorn “The Piker” Sturmberg had bailed the day before (claiming his decision was unrelated to the weather) following three others who did the same during in the week (although at least they were a bit more honest about their softness, hence no naming and shaming). We’d squeezed into two cars for the trip, but unfortunately one was a two wheel drive. The dirt road didn’t disappoint, with plenty of potholes, a flowing stream crossing the road, and a slippery section that had even my Forester feeling like it was on a slip-and-slide. Driving as far as the first private property fence in Little Capertee Creek we parked, did some last minute rationalising of pack weight, then set off along the creek.
We couldn’t have asked for better weather, with a crisp blue winter sky bathing the mountains in sun as we set off. The plan was a couple spectacular abseiling routes overlooking the Jamison Valley, where a total of 12 drops of up to 45 metres lead down to the rainforest below.
Michelle had been nagging me to organise another easy overnight trip after Orange Bluff and given it was my birthday over the weekend I thought it was a perfect time to oblige. It didn’t take much thought to realise Splendour Rock was the perfect trip, providing a lovely high camp site, incredible views, limited ups and downs and less than 10 kilometres each day from Green Gully.
Despite a long-time desire to spend a bit of time knocking over the passes of Narrow Neck – which are steeped in more bushwalking history than just about anywhere else in Australia – my trips always seem to overlook the area and involve more remote locations. Determined to rectify this, and conscious that I only had time for a day trip and was still nursing an ankle weakened by a sprain on my trip to Pantoneys, I decided to organise a run through of a few good ones. The plan,…