On Thursday night at the ledge Niels and I were talking about doing a dry canyon over the weekend somewhere. As we were talking Matilda joined in and offered that we could stay at her dad’s place in Lithgow and do a two day trip. This sounded like a brilliant plan so we decided discussing logistics. We decided it was easiest to do a Sunday-Monday trip as Matilda had family stuff on Saturday.
By the time Saturday night rolled around Simon and Wilbus had also joined in on our plans to do a canyon. Now for those of you who know Simon you would know that he had recently broken his ankle and at this point still had his leg in a boot. So we had to come up with a canyon that was easy enough that someone with a cane would be able to come along. Luckily we were giving Nat a lift up to her house in the Mountains and so we were able to gain her knowledge of canyons in the mountains. She suggested Wolgan View as it is pretty much a bushwalk through a canyon with no real ascent or descent. This sounded like our best option so we made plans.
Niels, Simon and I left Nat’s place the next morning around nine as the canyon is about two hours round trip so there was no need to get up early. We swung by Matilda’s place on the way as the canyon is just out of Lithgow down the glow worm tunnel road. Wilbus joined us on his motorcycle at the beginning of the dirt section and hopped in the car as we headed the forty minutes to the car park for Wolgan View (The Dry Canyon). About thirty minutes along we took a wrong turn off which caused us to drive through a tunnel. This was awesome and if you can find the tunnel I would recommend it because it is pitch black in the centre.
Anyway after about ten minutes of driving the wrong way we realised this as we were yet to hit the car park and so turned around and went back through the tunnel. We found the car park at 11:30am and discussed what we should take as it was a canyon but was supposed to require no technical skills. Now most people automatically write off a canyon if it requires no technical skills as they believe it will just be boring but this canyon is far from that. Relative to the walk in and walk out I would say it is one of the most spectacular canyons in the mountains and definitely worth doing if you have a day to kill in the mountains.
We all got together our lunch and Niels decided to bring his whole canyoning pack for training and we started on our way. It was pretty easy going and only took us about 40 minutes to get to the end of the canyon with only one slightly tricky scrambling part. The canyon opens up onto a cliff which has a view down onto a resort. It is a beautiful lookout and so we jumped onto a pagoda and ate our lunch whilst attempting to find things we could see.
After lunch we made the quick 40 minute walk back to the car and returned by 2:00pm. From here we had some discussion as to what to do for the rest of the day as we had a good three hours left of sunlight. I was pushing for the glow worm tunnel but everyone else had already done it multiple times so Wilbus headed back to Sydney and we headed back to Matilda’s place.
At Matilda’s place we decided we still wanted to do something with the rest of the day and so headed to the highest lookout in Blue Mountains which is only fifteen minutes from the centre of Lithgow. It was amazing we could see everything in a complete 360 and arrived just as the sun was beginning to set. We stayed here for about thirty minutes but as it was the middle of winter it got very cold as soon as the sun went down.
All round this was a great day that I would recommend to any first time canyoners or people looking for a chilled out day in the mountains.