Earlier this year a number of canyoning trip leaders and trip-leaders-in-training got the chance to go on a canyon with Alex, the president of the Australian Canyoning Association (ACA).
After a bit of email back and forth, Mali managed to set up a date and we all met at the grumpy baker in Bilpin, fueling up for the day ahead on coffee and pies. The original plan was to spend half a day learning to rig releasable systems and then head down Serendipity, a trip Alex has done with other outdoor clubs. However, thanks to the awesome trip leader training sessions put together over 2022 (thanks everyone who gave up your time!), we were all quite comfortable with our rigging skills. So Alex suggested a few days before that we instead do a bounce trip of Ranon Canyon.
As Alex put it, a bounce trip is a way to get more canyon out of your canyon. Instead of spending a few hours cursing your way up a ridge on the walk out, you instead go back up the canyon. To do this requires leaving ropes behind on each abseil pitch and bringing along ascending gear. Now this is were the fun starts to begin. A few people had proper mechanical ascenders, but about half of us just had good old fashioned prussiks (and grigris).
So after a chat about canyoning gear and a detour via the loo, we set off to the start of the canyon. The main takeaway I got from the chat was that the first gen Petzl canyon bags are awful, but the second gen ones are great (remember this for later). A few of our party had done the mistake ravine entrance to Ranon recently, so we decided to take the less traveled Ranon Brook entrance which has a few bonus abseils and canyon sections. Alex was also keen to take notes of the canyon to draft up some topos, which he published a few days after our trip. We left the cars at 9:20 am.
The walk in was through some particularly dense and cutty scrub, and got nastier in the steep sections where a few of us (me included) took some involuntary slides through the razor grass. About halfway along the walk, Oliver's bag decided to explode - splitting nearly in half along the seam. This bag just so happened to be a first gen Petzl bag that was just bought off Facebook marketplace...
Before long we had reached the brook and donned our wetsuits, jumping straight into the pools to escape the summer heat. I don't remember much about the Ranon Brook section of the canyon except that it was quite pleasant without being super spectacular. It did, however, provide plenty of abseils that gave us some good practice rigging and swinging abseils leads. That's the process were you send down a person with a rope first so they can rig the next abseil while you wait - essential when you have such a big party in such a long canyon. At each abseil we would leave the rope behind, ready for us to ascend on our way out.
After the junction with Mistake Ravine we got into Ranon canyon proper and things started to get slotty. Ranon was quite a pretty canyon and the ferns were glowing green in the light. It got a bit chillier than the brook so I went to put on my brand new Japanese fisherman gloves, only to find them missing 🙁 . At the second to last abseil, Alex pulled us all into a little boulder cave and showed us how to convert a single strand system into a hauling system. With Alfie dangling down below on the line, Alex attached a Tibloc to the loaded strand and set up his haul system. However, when Alex transferred Alfie's weight onto the haul system there was a nasty slip and the rope slipped down a bit, damaging the sheath. Stephen soon noticed that the rope was not passing through the biner as it should (see the Petzl diagram below), and instead the rope was in a 180 degree bend supported entirely by the tibloc. This was promptly fixed and the Alfie was safely lowered to the ground. There's probably a couple of lessons to learn here: even experienced people can make mistakes and safety is everyone's responsibility. Also its probably better to practice these things when someones life is not quite literally on the line.
After another spectacular abseil, we ended up at the junction of Claustral and Ranon - an absolutely stunning place. Having never visited Claustral before, I took the chance to wade upstream and peer up into the black hole of Calcutta (omg Claustral looks sick, I have to do that canyon soon). We then took a snack break at the junction and, noticing the time was 4pm, realized that we were only half way and now had to ascend back the way we came.
I think the realization really hit when I went to ascend the first pitch. Armed with my prussik, grigri, and a healthy serve of overconfidence I was second to go up. To say I was slow would be an understatement. If a sloth and a snail had a baby it would have been faster than me. The prospect of getting back to the cars by 6pm and making it home at a reasonable hour were now out the window, and as peels of thunder sounded through the valley I started to get ready for a bit of an epic. There were still 8 pitches to go...
After a miserable first ascension I started to get the hang of my system, extending and shortening different parts and realizing which way I needed to pull the ropes. But as I got better at ascending, the sky got darker, the thunder got louder, and lightning started to intermittently illuminate the narrow stretch of sky above. Then it started to lightly rain, and I started to freak out. Flash flooding is a very real risk in canyons, and all my brain could think of was how 3 people had died in the neighboring Claustral canyon due to a flash flood 40 years ago. I was really freaking out on the last pitch, by this point my right hand was rubbed raw from all the prussiking and my arms were well and truly pumped. I couldn't see anyone in front or behind. The lightning kept flashing faster. The thunder kept rumbling louder. My steps up the rope got shorter. But then I had made it up, and was out of the canyon.
For the next half hour I was still buzzing with adrenaline as everyone else made their way up and out of the canyon. I rushed 15 minutes upstream to look for my lost gloves at the spot we put wetsuits on, frantically feeling around pools of water in the dark - my dodgy head torch starting to lose power. Giving up hope on finding my never-worn gloves in the dark, I headed back to the others. Everyone had now made it out and we got ready to battle our way up through the steep brush in the rain.
The walk out was the longest 1 km of my life. Huge props to Stephen for navigating us out of there, after the adrenaline wore off I had no energy and was very happy to just follow in a line. By this point it was raining properly so I didn't even bother to take my wetsuit off. Fortunately the thunder and lightning died down (or maybe I just wasn't as stressed) as we hit the ridge and continued out.
Finally, we made it back to the cars at 10 pm, all feeling very relieved, very tired and very hungry. As people sorted out their stuff and handed back borrowed gear, I found a pleasant surprise in Margot's pack. My gloves were back! They must have been accidentally picked up while we were donning wetsuits. With that little silver lining, I said goodbye and headed back down to Sydney, stopping by Guzman a minute before they closed to pick up my order (sorry Guzman workers)!
PS: I've since used the Japanese fisherman gloves on a number of canyons and they have been so good! Super warm and flexible. I'm interested to see how much wear they can take. Unfortunately they are very hard to get outside of Japan 🙁
So what did I learn?
- Don't buy a first gen Petzl canyon bag
- Ascending with prussiks sucks
- Mechanical ascenders are probably a good idea for bouncing canyons
- It might be worth getting a tibloc or micro traction in case a haul system is needed
Other skills we all practiced:
- Teamwork in a canyon
- Whiste communication
- Hand signals
- Meat anchors
- Setting up and passing a rebelay
- Setting rope length
A huge thanks to Alex from ACA for running this day and teaching us, I had a great day (despite my moaning here) and would do it again next week if I had the chance.
Trip participants: Alfie, Angela, Daniel, Linna, Mali, Margot, Oliver and Stephen
Extra thanks to Mali and Brendan for organizing the trip and Stephen and Mali for the photos!