This was the reward for the old hands who helped with the beginners trip through the lower section of Macquarie Rivulet the day before. A couple of other members did the top section of Macquarie Rivulet a while ago and found it disappointing, but it comes into its own when there is a lot of water coming down, with a series of long abseils through big, crystal waterfalls. We parked…
AS you can see, bigger than Ben Hur, showing that there is a strong demand at present for day walks. Most of us met up at Circular Quay for the Manly Ferry, trying to keep together which is not easy given a ferry holds 1100 passengers. At Manly, Manon and Rebecca (who live locally) were waiting for us, but Cathy thought she had got off behind us instead of actually being ahead, and took off up The Corso trying to find us. A phone…
This is the second year we have held this trip. This is the ideal spot to learn basic canyoning skills, as two of the old hands who had not been here before immediately agreed. We had five old hands, six absolute beginners and five in-between on this trip, which proved a good ratio. We met…
The drive to the mountains was mixed: three people pulled out and the good coffee place in Richmond definitely isn’t open on Sundays anymore, but on the upside it wasn’t raining for the first time in two weeks. We left the Mt Wilson fire shed around 9am, finding the ‘gambe running swiftly but not perceptibly any higher than any other time we could remember. We climbed…
As you can see, a good turnout for this walk on what was a fairly cloudy day with occasional showers. Most of us met up at Central Station, and we were able to mainly sit in two groups with nobody standing. John got on at Penrith and we continued on up the Mountains until Leura. There was…
I write this trip report mostly to confess to a major stuffup for young members of the club to note. Seven walkers signed up at the start of the week, but after 2 illnesses and 2 complete smokebombs (possibly influenced by the forecast but it would still be nice to let me know), 3 of us met at Parramatta at 7am. In the…
Summer in the Australian Alps is a mixed affair. It can be very hot, cold, or wet . Big biting March flies can drive you insane and thunderstorms frequently develop on the peaks on hot days. Over time, I’ve become a little wary of doing trips to the Alps and expecting everything to go as planned. But if…
With the hot temperatures forecast throughout the weekend I decided on Friday afternoon a nice cool canyon trip would be in order to escape the heat. Since Saturday would be reaching temperatures up to 44 degrees in places I decided that Sunday would be the better option at 34 degrees. We all…
The days and weeks preceding this trip had been hot, interspersed far too infrequently by the occasional short interlude of cooler cloudier conditions. It was one such cool and cloudy interlude that just so happened to coincide with Australia Day, which just so happened to coincide with our planned trip to go canyoning out of a base camp on the Newnes Plateau. So, after…
Nobody had slept in or ended their safety spiel by begging for food, so we felt unusually professional as we locked the cars at a respectable hour and bundled down the footpad into Mistake Ravine. Mistake and then the upper parts of Ranon are flat with high ferny walls – one of the more pleasant canyons in the mountains. There were…
We met in Blackheath at a respectable Thursday morning hour and piled into the one car for the drive to Kanangra-Boyd NP. Despite the top temps forecast of 26 degrees, simply walking in the sun was enough to make this temp pale in comparison, and before long we were sweating on the hour walk down to the Kowmung. We ate…
This was the inaugural Wollongambe1 trip for myself and Robert, and we were really blessed with the most awesome day. Tony and Robert had enjoyed camping over at Cathedral of Ferns Reserve after having done Geronimo the day after so their bright eyed enthusiasm was almost harmful to my bleary eyes. This is…
We could not have been blessed with better water for this trip – mild temperatures easy to cope with during the sections of walking, great little puffy clouds for photography, blue skies, from start to finish it was just superb. It was a rare day too when the clarity of the skies was awesome – no smog! I couldn’t wait to get some photos. Tony and…
The aim of the trip was to see how far we could get down the Grose River in three days. The short version is: not as far as we hoped. We started out well. Catching the 07.23 train, we used Katoomba cabs to save the 8k hike out to Perrys Lookdown, the shortest route to the Bluegum Forest. We started…
This trip report is in two parts. See Part 1: the Grand Canyon on Saturday morning This year’s Christmas Dinner Walk was a little quieter than in recent years, a relaxing gathering by the river of some 18-20 people, some new faces but a group otherwise comprising almost entirely of Christmas Dinner Walk veterans. My group…
An absolutely straightforward trip through Fortress. We met for breakfast in Leura at a leisurely 9.30 and hit the trail about 10.45. The weather was perfect – low 20s and bright sunshine, and the water in the creek was a decent temperature. There is a clear track, as described in Tom Brennan’s notes, all the way to the creek, which took about an hour, where we donned wetsuits and harnesses. After a…
The party of 6 prospective canyoners assembled at Neates Glen car park on a mild and sunny December morning. All in the party except for myself were pretty much beginners to canyoning. So after the pre-canyon gear check we headed down the well-made walking track until we reached a small cliff where we could setup ropes for an abseil lesson. I gave…
Jack and I carried my 40m & 60m ropes for the trip. We down climbed the first optional abseil and I setup the second abseil that has a bit of an awkward start towards the edge where there are two boulders wedged together to make a narrow overhang abseil or you can use the rocks either side to step your way down. Our next…
https://youtu.be/dpEuvhnYnxM We made it to the mountains early enough to score a prime park and buy three books from some guy selling them out of a trailer near the fire shed, which international students might be interested to know is the Australian retail equivalent of Amazon’s ‘Black Friday’ sale. I’d been…
On the drive home we compared our experience to what I had written in the invitation – while I got the “5+ hours of walking each day” correct, I’d left out “It’s unorthodox at this time of the year” at the start and made no mention of “substantial off-track walking”, no “navigational challenges” and no “I haven’t ever been there or read really detailed trip reports so can only make a guess at a few particulars”… After leaving…