I had forgotten how beautiful Upper Bowens Creek South was until I did it again in mid-January with a Scouts party. The clambouring in the main canyon section required some level of nerve and skill, and I thought it would be excellent for beginners if simplified. I wished to eliminate the car turnaround on Bells Line of Road (not undangerous) and the 2 or 3 abseils (which are pretty ordinary). T2 advised…
Tom and myself arrived at Woy Woy station to collect the walkers who had indicated they were coming up on the train at 9.25am. One potential walker missed the train, and so did Jemma, who decided to catch the next one and get to Pearl Beach by taxi. That left 10 people coming off the train, with Angelo appearing to be a “no show”, or so we thought. Tom and…
Sky and I were keen to get into a canyon, as we hadn’t had time for one in several months. After a distinct lack of interest in Butterbox for the weekend, we changed it at the last minute to the easier WDWDIITR and ended up with an awesome group of 6 intermediate canyoners. Our plan…
14 of us met up at Cowan Station for the walk along part of the Great North Walk to Brooklyn Tim having driven up on his scooter). Unfortunately a couple of people missed the train at Central as they relied on their transport app to find the departure platform; the app was wrong! (More about transport apps later). But two…
Meet at 9:30am at Glenbrook Station. Sierra thinks she is the only female, but then come two more down the road from the toilets, so it’s alright. Kevin of the Bankstown Bushwalkers starts chatting with us. T2 tries to drop names, but can’t remember the names he is trying to drop, so ends up saying things like “that middle aged woman who abseils” and “that young, mid to late twenty year old guy”, and “that guy whose name I can’t remember who came on a trip with me a couple of years ago”. Somehow Kevin…
Despite the bad weather 5 brave walkers met up at Central Station for the trip to Helensburgh. We got off at Helensburgh in drizzling rain and having donned raincoats and put up umbrellas, set off for Metropolitan Tunnel. (Because most of the walk was through fairly open country it was possible to use umbrellas, not normally a standard bushwalking item). Metropolitan Tunnel…
Press on Regardless! It’s the SUBW motto, but sometimes, it’s good to wait for better weather… On the weekend of 22 – 23 Feb I organized a trip to Bungonia Gorge. I had planned to run the trip in January, but the temperatures on that weekend were forecast to be in the high 30s up towards 40C. So I…
Views through Danae (Photo by Stephen Sheehan) Danae Brook is one of Kanangra’s most iconic slot canyons and well known for being a long, challenging, yet spectacular trip. There are several exit options, but arguably the most interesting one involves scrambling up and over Thurat Spires. With my…
We were up for an adventshaaaaaaaa ( “wickeeeeeed!”, “epiiiiiiiic!”). So we met up at North Richmond as usual, drove up to the Claustral car park and started walking – 17 minutes behind schedule as the German pointed out. This actually turned out to be good timing because a few meters down the track we had a beautiful view across the mountains with a really colourful sunset. We continued…
After weeks of baking dry conditions, a little rain fell on Thursday and Friday and this brought welcome relief to the parched mountains and set the stage for perfect weather conditions for this very popular trip! Indeed, it was a company of some 15 people who made their way down the Wolgan Valley on Friday evening and setup a camp some distance away from the busy main Newnes campground. The stage…
We went to Devil’s Pinch (sat) and Pipeline canyons (sun) in Wolgan Valley over the weekend (Jan 11-12). NB. Pipeline track is noted as closed on the NPWS website (needs to be re-routed on the Glen Davis side) but I called them before going and it is open for access on the southern side. However, you…
The Wentworth Creek takes a very meandering route through rugged terrain down to meet the Grose river north of Faulconbridge. There are several ridges that run out from the towns on the plateau, with firetrails running at least part of the way along most of them. This area doesn’t seem to get visited much given how close to transport it is, I guess it falls between the cracks of being much harder walking than the byzantine network of old tourist tracks on the southern side of the highway, yet not as picturesque as say the Kowmung. In any…
This was going to be a trip down the Colo River from Crawford’s Lookout to near Canoe Ck. However, after posting the trip on SUBW, Alexa wondered if the Coloul Range Fire Trail was actually open and not it wasn’t (that was our starting point), Grant called to tell me that the water levels at this time of year are low and the distances would make it a bit of a push for two days (next time I’ll make it a three day trip), and T2 emailed with low water information as well. Thank you!…
What better way to escape the scorching temperatures of Australia’s hottest year on record than to hang out in some of the more remote canyons in the Wollemi National Park? That said, we nearly didn’t make it to the Cooroongooba campground, with 11 fires flaring up in the Wollemi region just before Christmas and the campground taken over by remote firefighting helicopter operations. Fortunately, the…
The ridge trail was at times faint but as it turned more to the north near hill 998 we kept on east, then eventually round to the south, down the scrubby untracked ridge down to a point where the vegetation cleared a little and the patchwork of mostly burnt with some unburnt bush on Waratah Ridge was visible. Other ridges…
Just a quick report on my 3 peaks walk the other day. Summary is I just made it, but it was hard going and I wasn’t very well for most of it. Set off about 5 am and made good time to the Cox’s river, just over 5 hours. Went down Yellow Pup track but then up Mt Konangaroo & Bullagowar as I was doing it “anti-clockwise” with Guougang the first peak, having done it the “normal” direction previously. That was…
Having already completed a few easy solo walks over the past year or so and with a bit of free time over the Christmas break, I was keen to get out on something a little bit more challenging. I had never walked in the Blue Breaks before but had heard a lot of good things, and its remoteness served as a brightly coloured lure I simply could not resist. So, when…
Following a late night email on Saturday night, Hossein was the only one who was able to get away at a reasonable hour on Sunday, but even so, it was after 11am when we left the car. There were 7 cars parked at the Claustral entrance / exit and none any further up the road, so we were confident we would have at least Ranon Canyon to ourselves. It was…
Carrabeanga Falls is described in the canyoning guide book as being “an epic, due to its remoteness, problems of loose rocks, and the exposure of some abseils”. This always sounded like a good fun trip for me and this summer I finally got a chance to schedule it. Due to its length, Carrabeanga is usually done as a two day trip, with the walk in and the canyon on day one before walking out the next morning after camping at the junction with Kanangra Creek — if the party doesn’t get benighted. In fact,…
Such was the breadth and depth of SUBW attending this trip it would seem that just one trip report written by just one attendee can’t do it justice. The trip would be worthy of multiple trip reports should anyone else wish to write one. The Christmas Dinner Walk, held in December every year is one of the most important dates in the SUBW calendar because it is the weekend when members both new and old descend to the same spot on the Coxs River for a weekend of camping, socializing, swimming, eating, drinking and lazing around by the riverside. An alternative…