Howdy folks. I am here to tell you a story, of 3 lovely ladies, and of 4 very hardy men. It was a 4 hour drive that brought them to the Wolgans, and that's how they became the canyoning bunch. The canyoning bunch. The canyoning bunch. That's how they all became the canyoning bunch. It all started out on a pleasantly chilly night, with the nice drive up the M4 to Lithgow through the Blue Mountains (after a small detour to avoid the toll of course). We all rendezvoused at Lithgow Pizza Hut, where we sat down for one last night of 'civilized' feasting before disappearing off into the cold uncomfortable wild. Funnily enough, this was probably the worst meal of the weekend. We then hopped into our roaringly powerful machines to zoom off to the place of canyons. After a nerve-racking 40 minute drive down a truly ominous dirt track, in constant danger of being crushed by falling rocks, and a near car failure experience, we finally arrived at our campsite-to-be. We started setting up (and realized how dopily redundant we were - 7 people do not require 5 tents), but the beauty of the night entranced us and we all ended out on groundsheets staring at the stars. Definitely a great start to the weekend thought I as sleep snuck up on me and slammed me on the back of the head real hard.
The next day we woke up at a very ungodly hour, geared up and set out. Today we would attempt to find and master the aptly named starlight canyon. Assured by our faithful guide that this was in fact a 'dry'canyon, we left with a bare minimum of warm stuff - a woollen jumper each and a few sets of thermal underwear. Thus equipped and provisioned, we set out on the trek to the start of the canyon. The first stage was a nice brisk bushwalk up an increasingly steep and painful slope. Sorry, did I say nice? I meant gorgeous (although mildly tiring to our band of mildly inexperienced incompetents). The view from the exposed points was quite amazing, and at the top there was a lovely lookout from which we gazed out over the valley while munching on peppermint carob and lovely peanuts.
While the followers relaxed and contemplated our collective navels, Scott and Owain attempted to discover the arcane secrets of topo maps - such as where our trail was. After much humming and haaaing, we just decided to set off into the deepest darkest bush we could find. Finally we found the first abseil into the canyon. By now we were laughing at our initial fears of chilly weather - how could we ever be cold on a gorgeous day like today?
Boy would we find out. So we began to follow the canyon. The going was pretty easy, and there weren't many abseils at all. The first really cool thing we found was an overhang which had water dripping off it. The wind blowing past it was amazingly parallel, and so hundreds of parallel furrows about an inch deep had been carved in the sand below from dripping water. Very cool. Then we all of a sudden came upon the highlight of this particular canyon. A 20-25 meter black hole straight down, with a slight breeze blowing out of it and a disturbingly large pool of water at the bottom, considering that this was a 'dry' canyon. Looking a little worried we sent down Scott to see if the canyon was actually do-able. After a quick scout he reassured us that everything would be cool, so into the hole we headed. A few of us managed to have the foresight to think "big black hole + water = wear thermals", and it was good that we did. Owain dashed over to the far side for the pretty photo ops of descending a waterfall, and into the dark we went.
The tunnel. How to describe it? I have been waffling up to here to try and think of a way to describe it, but I am still at a loss. Picture this: a 300 m long tunnel (very thin, and very short in places) with long stretches of knee - waist high water, and literally thousands and thousands of glow-worms just coating all the walls. With the lights off it was like having our own private night sky during the day. There were many more gasps of wonder and delight than of freezing and cold, and it was definitely the highlight of the canyon. A few extra special memories come from those moments when we had to go through bits with only a bit less than a foot between the roof and our heads. Definitely NOT a canyon to do with too much water. Upon stumbling out into the warm(ish) sunlight at long last we just sat and ate and thought deep thoughts. Definitely a VERY cool place.
The rest of the day was a bit of a blur: there was a pretty long climb down through very slippery boulders, and about a 5-6 km walk back to camp (unless you get lost, that is). Back at the camp we set up a roaring blaze with wood brought in by the park rangers, and sat and told stories while exchanging back and foot rubs.
Sleep. Stars. Gorgeous.
Slept in. We set off, much later, with much heavier boots, weighted mostly by our collective exhaustion. Today it was the Pipeline canyon - a very different canyon. There were about eight abseils in total, all slippery and slimey and much fun. This was the 'wet' canyon. Thus, much wetter than the 'dry' canyon. In places the water reached over our heads, and by the end of the day we had all learnt the true meaning of cold.
The scenery was amazing, and the closest many of us have come to being in a rainforest. Slimy and dirty as hell, but that just added to the fun we were having. A few of the beginners had trouble with some of the abseils, but overall they weren't too bad. Some experience is recommended, though.
Finally, we stumbled out of the canyon onto a sheer cliff face which we found WAS the walk back. We had a fly-on-the-cliff view of the valley for the hour and a half walk back to our campsite, where we saw the end of our day. Bloody amazing.
And so, after much rejoicing and packing and changing of clothes and getting warm and starting of cars and picking up of stray socks trying to make it in the wild (a real danger to wild feet) we set off back down the mountain towards home. It was a truly awesome weekend, and I would thoroughly recommend it to all and sundry.
Love yous all, Bob.
P.S. Thanks a bunch to Scott Morrison for making this happen.