Newnes Plateau Canyoning

01/12/2007 - notes - photos - report

Participants: James Yorston, Jonathan Potts, Tom Brennan

The aim for the day was to have a crack at Dumbano. However, the forecast was not good, and neither was the weather as we got up to Mt Wilson. I suggested we just keep driving and see what happens. We eventually got out on to the Newnes Plateau where the rain finally stopped.

We headed off down a fire trail for a dry canyon I had visited before. Near the end of the fire trail we headed off into the bush looking for the canyon. We didn't exactly end up in the right creek straight away. In fact, we almost ended up back on the fire trail. But skirting around the cliff edges we found a long slot and headed all the way up to the top to climb in.

Despite being quite narrow, it was impressive, with an abseil and a couple of tricky climb downs. It went on for some distance before we broke out on to the cliffs and did a final abseil to the ground. I checked out a couple of side gullies which seemed to lead back up through the cliffs, before going up the one I had been up before.

At lunch on the cliff tops Jonathan managed to cut open his thumb with a knife - just after talking about it! It bled quite a lot and kept bleeding,and we had to use a fair bit of strapping tape to hold it together. He decided that he would be unable to canyon the next day, so once back at the car, we drove to Lithgow. At Lithgow it turned out we had just missed the train and the next one would not be for two hours! I suggested we race the train to Mt Vic. We arrived at the same time at Mt Vic, and so pushed on to Blackheath where he was finally able to get it in time!

James and I then drove to Mt Wilson where it was still raining, and camped with the Canyoning Festival participants. There was a nice big fire going that seemed to keep most of the rain away. Some of the groups had had some exciting trips with all of the water.

Tom Brennan : website@ozultimate.com: updated 2008-01-11