Sydney is blessed with an abundance of rugged bush land less than two hours drive away, and in this bush land lie some of the most pristine and delicate environments that can be found. 
Visiting these places may require no more than a simple walk along a creek, or demand bush craft and navigation skills just to get there. 

These trips are 'canyon' trips which involves starting high in the range and following a creek or stream as it carves it's way down to the river valley. The Kanangra canyons are generally fairly open and following these is an exercise in abseiling and scrambling. The beauty of this area is the panoramic views along the Kanangra Walls and valleys. The incredible ruggedness of the area.

Blue Mountains canyons like Claustral, cut deep into the sandstone below them and over time have worn channels and gutters, deep enough that direct sunlight never reaches the bottom. Walking and swimming through these is a magical tour through a ferny green wonderland. A visit to the lost planet. 

I have kept these notes as a reminder to myself of the individual trips, as well as to provide 'some' useful information for following excursions, or to supply to others planning similar outings. 

Earlier trips are documented on my original canyons page, and other trips are indexed on my main canyoning page

On Friday night I drove up to Katoomba and slept in the car at the locked gate to Narrowneck so as to enable an early start for my walk to Mt Solitary and back on the Saturday. OW! What the hell have I done to my knee ?!?!?

Saturday night I spent camped at Mt Wilson and was therefore 1st car in the car park, waiting fo the rest of our group to arrive, as seemingly 'hundreds' of other people amassed for their Wollangambe et al trips.

Initially heaps of people appraoched me to ask if I was part of XYZ group or not.
"No, I'm just waiting for some friends..." (smile and wave, smile and wave).

Presently our group arrives and Barry helps every one gear up and give a quick and informal brief on where we're going and what to expect. That done and we set off along the fire trail to the standard entry for Serindipity. I say standard because the only other time I visited this canyon was by myself, and contrary to the advise given to me by friends, I chose to enter via a gully on the other side ... and got a little more than I bargained for, but that's another story...

Barry was careful to point out to us, the track in and the point at which the track out, joins back. (The Bifrucation). I wish I had remembered this a few weeks later. (But that, is yet another story...).

On the way in, we stopped by a convinient rock to don our wetsuits and harnesses and had a quick 'practice' abseil just to make sure everyone was OK with the drill. At this point, another group passed us and made their way to the first pitch. With our practice over we also made our way around the corner and found the pitch free for us to continue. This is a beautiful pitch ending in a flat junction with plenty of space to move about for a group.

We moved together along the lovley green corridor making good time by walking along the creek bank, ducking under ferns, and sliding over rocks into shallow pools along the way. Eventually the 2nd pitch was reached, as was the party ahead of us. Tiny fish darted about in the shallow pool before the drop and I got some good shots of these on video. One even had a go at a small twig I waved invitingly over it's head!

Soon it was our turn on the pitch, and Patty took the lead while I took the film. The lads went next followed by Baz, and I followed on as smartly as possible. This next section of canyon is quite nice as it's kind of enclosed and suddenly 'pops' out via the next short pitch, into a long pool with a sandy beach on the far side. Some say this can be jumped. After a good long look I decided this could be jumped 'another day', prefering to save myself for the next pitch.

Happy to jump this last one and film from in the water I got some shaky shots of the others as they jumped or 'rapped as was their prefference.

Reaching the end of the4 canyon, we turned left and headed up-stream for the exit in that direction looking for a suiatble sunny rock to lounge on for lunch.

Several other groups had already exited the canyon and were doing exactly the same thing, so our timing was pretty good. The sun was high and warm, the sky blue and cloudless. After luch we amused ourselves with some bigger jumps into a prisine Wollangambe before packing up and heading onwards to the exit point.

Heading up the stream is definitly a little harder than the down stream route, but views afforded by the huge walls on either side are no less rewarding ! A couple of groups passed us going the other way with the obliatory "Hey ... you're going the wrong way !", comments.

The short climb up near the exit presented no problems and we were astounded by the sheer number of people milling about at the exit. There must have been 20 people when we arrived. Most had moved off by the time we had changed into dry clothes, and packed for the walk up.

Steady walking saw as back to the car in the late afternoon and my knee was surprisingly still doing well !

For my second trip through this canyon I had a ball... nice to know where the 'real' entrance is for a change !