Party: Stella, Eve, Meridy, Andrew (Trip Leader), Joy, Aiden, Jingle
Date: 2017-09-24
We all met at Richmond McDonalds carpark at the early hour of 6:30am and departed in convoy to the clearing on the side of the road where the start of the Better Offer Track is.
For Stella, Joy and Jingle this was their first abseiling canyoning trip. Once we donned our gear it was about a 20 minute walk to the rock outcrop that overlooks into the Grose valley. Not far from the rock outcrop is where the headwaters of Better Offer Canyon and the first abseil that goes down to the side of waterfall which wasn’t flowing due to how dry it has been lately start.
I gave an abseiling demonstration with Eve being the bottom the belayer and explained the role of what the belayer does. Everyone managed to do the first abseil with no issue. It was starting to get overcast with some dark clouds lurking over us. There was no rain predicted for the day and we only had intermittent very light spitting rain a couple of times throughout the canyon but nothing serious enough to put wet weather gear on.
From the first abseil there were two more abseils, one that goes down a narrow slot to an ankle deep pool then a slippery slide abseil.
The third abseil which goes into a pool that is chest deep was quite chilly being early spring the water hasn’t quite warmed up yet. Everyone moved quite quickly out of the pool on that abseil. A short walk downstream brought us to the main abseil into an amphitheatre. There are a choice of two anchors one that goes directly down the waterfall which was dry and the other one that is overhung a few metres down from the edge of the cliff. I opted to do the overhung abseil which was a fun option that everyone agreed on.
Immediately after the overhung abseil was the last one which is only 2m but is a bit tricky because of the angle it is at. Once we finished all abseils we had lunch in an opening in the forest before heading downstream to find a rough track that we followed back up to the ridge and back to the cars.
Thankyou to everyone on the trip for making it an enjoyable day