As it usually does these days, it started with a Facebook thread. The Plan was to head down to Bungonia on Saturday morning to do a couple of canyons, and head back on Sunday night. There was much discussion as to which canyons we were going to do, but as we pulled into the car park at Bungonia, Katie, Bayu, Amandine, Daniel and I decided to do Jerrara Creek on Saturday...
Now, I must admit, I was somewhat sceptical of the Bungonia Canyons. I'd heard mixed reviews about them being 'un-interesting' and 'more of a gorge than a canyon'. The thing that draws me to the Blue Mountains canyons is the narrow slots, the cool temperate micro-climates, the ferns and the green mossy rocks. Bungonia offers none of this, but as we got the mouth of canyon, none of that mattered because they are fucking awesome!
What bungonia lacks in the tranquil peacefulness of the Blue Mountains, it makes up for epicness! When you are are surrounded by 300m cliffs on either side of you can't help but feel small. The smooth, sun soaked rocks make for excellent heat pads after the many mandatory swims. Standing at the top of a 50-60m abseil and looking down the valley makes you feel nervous like just the first time you jumped on a rope. I can not rate these canyons highly enough.
Anyway, enough gushing - here's the story...
We pulled up in the car park just before 11, chucked stuff in bags and walked an hour along the yellow track to the top of the canyon. We discussed whether or not we actually needed wetsuits on the way down, but when we got into the first pool, I was glad to have it on. The water wasn't particularly cold, and on a warmer day you could definitely get away without one...but still.
Jerrara Creek consisted of a number of short to medium sized jump-in's and about 5 abseils depending on which exit you take. We took at 50m rope and pull line and that was fine. This was the first time I'd set up a used 'biner block' and I am totally converted. It is a much better way to do things that taking enough rope to double line the whole way down. If you do opt for this method though, make sure you carry a couple of spare mallions.
We made our way down the creek until it opened up at the end and we found ourselves about 80m above Bungonia Creek. It is at this point that things got interesting. The track notes suggest multiple exits. One is to head up a SKETCHY looking ridge and meet up with the yellow track we walking in on. All the others consist of heading down to Bungonia Creek by a few different methods.
We looked around for anchors but all we could find was a horribly rusty (like seriously, one of the chain links looked like it had rusted through) perched on a precarious ledge. The notes suggest using this anchors to rappel down to another anchor on anouther dodgy ledge and reblay for anouther rappel to the creek. We dicided to skip these rusty bolts and did some exposed scrambling to get across to the trees and scree slope. We went down the scree for about 30m until we found a tree with anchor to tape (we had to replace the tape because it was very old and worn) to rappel down the cliff into the creek.
We got down to Bungonia Creek, made one more 40m abseil and made our way to the Red Track to get back to the campsite at about 7pm. God bless these long days that you can start a canyon at 11am and still get back in daylight at 7pm :D.
Just as we got back to camp, Phil arrived to join us for a canyon on Sunday. We pitched tents, cooked dinner, had a few quick games of cards and went to bed. I was awoken at about 1am to the sound of someone trying to bash tent pegs into the hard Bungonia dirt with a rock. Anthony - who had also planned to join us on Sunday, and we weren't sure was still coming - had arrived!
The next morning we packed out bags on set off down the yellow track, again, to Bungonia Creek at about 9am. By 9:05am we got to the the creek and started rock hoping down to the first abseil.
It was a very windy day and loose rock and debris was being blown of the tall canyon cliffs all over the place, and made all the abseils feel very exposed. It added for a great sense of danger.
The top part of Bungonia Creek is a lot shorter that Jerrara creek, but just as awsome. We went down the second abseil and linked back up where we had came up the previous day. After the third and final abseil we stopped for lunch in and sun and started drying our clothes in the wind - I managed to dry my underwear!
45 mins of rock hoping later we got back to the Red Track again and started making our way up - it seemed a lot easier the second time around and we even saw and echidna!
We were back to the cars by 5pm and shared a couple of beers that Phill had in his esky. It was a pretty cruisy drive back and we were home by 730 - it was even still light outside!
Big thank you to Kaite for all the pictures.