Ranon Canyon

Ranon Canyon is an excellent trip, as it shares some of the best parts of Claustral Canyon and also of Thunder Gorge. It can be a good way of avoiding some of the congestion of Claustral, although it requires a car shuffle or road bash.

It was first descended by a Kameruka Bushwalking Club party consisting of Barry Dunnett and Dave Lambert in 1962.

Entry

There are a couple of ways of entering Ranon Canyon. Either way, leave a car at the Claustral carpark at Mt Tomah South.

The shorter way is via Mistake Ravine (this is "Ranon Canyon" in the Jamieson guide). Drive west along Bells Line of Rd to AMG577848 and park at a grassy open area just past the top of the hill. Walk down the scrubby ridge to the SW. Scramble into the creek at AMG577845. A short way down the creek there are three short drops. These can be abseiled, handlined or climbed. Then there is a reasonable section of canyon to the junction with Ranon Brook. The creek walk is nice and flat, with very green ferns lining the walls, but the canyon is fairly open.

The longer way is to enter Ranon Brook higher up (this is "Ranon Brook Canyon" in the Jamieson guide). It is quite nice, but rather than a separate canyon, I would view it simply as a different way into the system. I wouldn't bother doing it as a canyon in it's own right. Drive west along Bells Line of Rd to just N of the 888 point, and head down the ridge to the ESE aiming to drop into the creek near the junction at AMG578839. There is a short canyon section just before the junction with Mistake Ravine. It starts with a 9m abseil, then a 5m abseil or hand line, a 15m drop in a couple of stages, and a 4m jump, climb down or abseil. There are a couple of other tricky climb downs. There are pools after most of the abseils, but they can be avoided with some difficulty if you want to keep your top half dry.

Notes

From Ranon Brook, there is a bit of walking to the first abseil, about 6m into a waist deep pool. Then follows a short section of canyon, another short drop, and then another abseil. This is about 6m, and the log that used to be there is now gone. The abseils are both a bit awkward - overhung with chockstones. It is a bit further to the final drop. There are two main ways to get down.

The first is to traverse along ledges to the right to some slings from a tree. This is quite a long direct drop - about 30m. A full 60m rope should reach but I wouldn't advise shorter.

More exciting is to scramble down logs into a cavern to the left. There are two abseils, going down four waterfalls, with pools after the first and third. The first is a 15m abseil from a large chockstone, down the first two sections of the falls to another chamber. Finally a 20m abseil down another two sections, also from a large chockstone. Both of these abseils involve a short swim across the pool between the falls.

Either way brings you out into Claustral Brook, about 100m downstream from the Black Hole of Calcutta.

700m of high quality canyon brings you to the Thunder Gorge junction. If you have time it is worth visiting Thunder Canyon from the bottom.

The creek opens out for about 500m before narrowing again. There are some tricky climb downs in the next section. There are also two longer climb downs of about 5m each, which usually have fixed ropes in place. In between the climb downs is the Tunnel Swim, a long cold swim up to 50m through a dark tunnel.

Rainbow Ravine is a reasonably obvious sloping waterfall that comes in on your left, as the creek bends right. About 50m past this there is a final 20m swim to the exit gully. Many parties miss this exit and end up being benighted in the canyon, so be careful.

Exit

Scramble up the exit gully for about 20m and then traverse left under the cliff to Rainbow Ravine. Head up Rainbow Ravine. Don't keep going up the exit gully! There are a few tricky scrambles in Rainbow Ravine, and some wades (for those who carry dry socks or shoes).

Where the gully splits higher up, head to the left. At the top there is another tricky scramble, first up a log and then up a small overhang.The overhang is hard for shorter people, though there is a very good handhold for the tall I have heard that it may be possible to avoid these scrambles by traversing around to the next gully to the right, but I have not checked this.

From there follow the obvious track up to the Camels Hump, down to the saddle and up the other side and then along to the car park.

Comments

A very nice way into the Claustral system. The main abseil down the falls is spectacular, although the upper sections are less so. The creek walk is nice, but it is not a great canyon until you get below the main abseil.

As usual, the section below the abseil is awesome.

There are a few short swims in Ranon itself, but only at the final set of abseils. There are about three longer swims in Claustral, but they were not too cold.

Rating: 5/5

Time

Via Mistake Ravine - 1h20min from start to the Ranon Brook junction. 2h20min to the junction with Claustral. 1h20min to the exit gully. 2h back to the car park, including lunch. 7h all up. 3 people, 1 experienced, 2 moderately experienced.

From the top - about 10h, with 5 people, 1 very experience, 4 moderately experienced, 1 inexperienced.

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