Brendan's friend Winnie was coming down Brisbane for the week and he wanted to show her the wonders of the blue mountains - so naturally, canyoning was the obvious activity of choice! Being winter however, he wanted to do something that wouldn't result in hypothermia, so we suggested he do Tiger Snake canyon. He asked Laura and I if we wanted to come along at the pub, and we were happy to get the invite. I suggested a group size no bigger that 8 would be good, but being the typical beginners trip, we ended up with 12...
I told everyone the plan was to meet up a the Zig-Zag railway at 8am on Sunday morning to start the drive out to the canyon. Brendan and co. wanted to come up from Sydney that morning, and the thought of a 5am wake up meant that I got some groans. Laura, Tom, and I met up with Timo at Manon's parents house in Leura where we ate pizza and slept on Saturday night. We left there at about 7ish and met Austin, Emma and Ronald at Zig-Zag at about 7:40. Brendan, Winnie, Skye and Art turned up 15 mins later so we were already 5 minutes ahead of schedule!
A 30-40 minute drive out along the Glow Worm Tunnel road brought us to the car-park where everyone quickly packed their bags. Not wanting to carry the maps, I put out a call for anyone who felt they were lacking in navigational skill - Skye obliged to take the maps! We signed the log book and with Skye at the navigational helm, all 12 of us headed off down the fire trail.
By the time the track began to peter out, it became clear that Skye did not know where we were going, so I gave her a few map reading pointers - she became the brunt of much navigational-based jeering for the remainder of the day. Despite this, we found our way to the entrance of the canyon with incident.
I brought two ropes so that we could stack the first three abseils (a 60m and ~15m rope). Some beginners abseiling tuition was required on the first drop, but everyone picked it up with supreme ease (so proud of you guys ^-^). At the top of the second abseil, everyone was nervous about the anchor, but did enjoy standing around using the word 'faggot' in its more formal context. I managed to get down the abseil, and, with judicious scrambling, was able to keep my brand new, fluro-white volleys clean and dry. That was until Laura scraped her dirty foot across the top of them in a jealous rage.
Abseil 3 passed without incident and everyone enjoyed the more open, overhanging experience. We continued through the scrub to abseil 4 which has a tricky start through a narrow slot opening above a large, deep chamber. Much singing was practiced in the echoey depths while those below waited for those of us still to abseil. At the bottom, everyone enjoyed scrambling around, exploring the magnificent lower constriction. Brendan and I tried to give Manon a lesson in rope coiling, but she "did not stretch out her angel wings!", so it ended in a large mess, and we both laughed.
Stretching my angel wings!
We headed out of the constriction and checked out some glow worms in the cave at the bottom of the canyon. Against my better judgment, I let Skye lead me past the exit gully so we ended up walking 5 minutes past it -oops. We doubled back and climbed up the exit gully and had lunch at the lookout at the top. Very nice view and the weather was glorious! Laura and I shared Vegemite, cheese and tomato sandwiches. I struggled to cut up the tomato without a proper chopping board and my shame was made public to everyone on the trip. Once everyone had eaten their fill, we continued up the hill and hung out on a pagoda for a while before finishing the walk out to the car.
All in all, it was a fairly un-eventful trip and everyone had a good time (no-one complained so I assume they had a good time).