As the sun began to warm up the rocks a little too much to climb hard (yes I’m good at making excuses), we decided to expand our horizons and head into the “summer of canyoning.” It has proven to be a true season of ropes, growth and adventure, but there'll more on that later.
This included an awesome five day trip to Kanangra-Boyd National Park, with Mali, Linna, Alfie, Theo, Lucas, and an ambitious itinerary of 4 canyons and 2 rest days. Box Creek, Kalang Falls, Kanangra Main, and Danae Brook. And two rest days…
We had planned to meet at the Kanangra campground, a lovely campground by the way, at 11am to head straight into the easier Box Creek canyon and get familiar with the beautifully slippery quartzite of the area. With some faff in deciding between having enough seats for our crew or bringing some boulder pads, and getting played by maps saying that Jenolan Caves Rd had reopened (it had not), we all ended up arriving at the campground at 1pm and the start of the canyon just before 4pm.
Standing at the top of the canyon, and seeing the sun hit all the pools we were about to abseil into, we couldn't imagine it any other way. It was so beautiful! And so with some fat smiles on our faces, we geared up and headed on down some fun, straight forward wet abseils.
With three ropes and a group who were all comfortable with rigging and manning anchors (thanks to the workshops over the last year!), we managed to work together pretty efficiently. We continually swapped bags with ropes and sent them down first and so we had two or three abseils set up at any one time. It was all very exciting, feeling like a solid team and playing a part in it.
The ideal thing about this canyon we had chosen to start that late was that we could bail at any point and easily walk straight back up and out. However, we managed to finish the last of the nine abseils right as the sun had gone behind the mountains, so it was a little more cold than the rest of them. We were all very happy to have successfully completed our first canyon of the trip, and to realise that the walk out was a fun slabby climb back up, a few metres left of the abseils we had just done.
We scrambled and chased the sun back up to the start, just in time to have a lovely jump and swim as the sun set. The rest of the walk out was probably the most chill canyon walk out ever, and I was incredibly pleased with that, being 8.30pm when we began to exit. It was definitely nice to come back to our tents already set up, having a quick meal and getting right to bed.
Alarms go off at 7am the next morning, as we anticipate the almighty K-Main. Eyes half open, we quickly have a team meeting over breakfast, to discuss the what we were getting ourselves into, rope lengths and numbers, and how we were going to be even more efficient than the day before. We decided that we would do the canyon via "The Wall" route as we weren't fully brave or committed enough to enter the Slot. From observing the topo, it seemed that the canyon itself was a continuous series of abseils (16 total) with some short scrambles between here and there. Well that obviously got us mega psyched!
That plan started with getting to the start of the canyon before the PM today, making it super impressive that we got there before 9am. Along the walk in, we complained that the grey misty morning did not look like the 25 degree weather we were promised, as evident in Alfie's face below. But the views out were still spectacular, the cool rocky spires that were somehow reminiscent of south-east Asia's temples and the stunning Walls lurking in the distance.
Holy moly, seeing what we were just about to head into was insane. So much sheer drop. So very cool. The number of abseils and their lengths, meant that we had to be intelligent in swapping abseil leads, making sure the person going down had a long enough rope to rig the next one. Communication became difficult as we continued heading down, with the falls pumping right beside us. This was when having a whistle each became super important, to be able to communicate with whistle signals as below. We also learnt a whole bunch of different hand signals from the "Canyoning Technical Manual" we borrowed from the club library, for when we could see each other on the drops, but not hear each other so well.
These abseils were all pretty long (many 40m+), awesome and some quite slippery when wet, so exercise caution unless you want to end up bum sliding all of them on rope, as I had done. Some of the abseils also had the option for a more dry line further to the left away from the falls. Its hard to describe but trust me they were cool as, here are some photos to prove myself correct:
We had managed to move through the first 12 abseils quite efficiently, patting ourselves on the back a little here and then, "fuck yeah guys, we're doing so good… go team!" This was all until the epic 45m abseil through decent pump into a deep pool. All of us went down the line with no troubles, having a blast and deciding unanimously along the grape vine that it was the best abseil of the canyon, even before having done the final three.
Everyone had continued down to set up the next two abseils, as I waited for Mali to swim across before we went to pull down the rope. There were two ropes tied together to make the length of the abseil, with a biner block on the non-abseil strand as Mali went down last. When I went to tug on the pull strand, it literally gave me nothing and that's when I knew that our luck had ran out. Mali insisted that if we just changed the angle of the pull, we'd be able to do it fine with the two of us pulling, so we tried it. Absolutely no give. We call Alfie back to help. Nothing.
Mali starts to panic and plays through all the possible scenarios in his head: did I clip the biner block to the ring bolt? Did the biner get caught in one of the cracks that I didn't think it would get stuck in?
Mali and Alfie discuss what the plan of action is as I go to relay the news down to the others. About 30 or so minutes pass and I find out that Linna is sat at the bottom by herself, and no one has passed the information down to her. I make my way towards her, and boy, was she happy to see me. I tried to yell to her to update her on the situation and eventually she nods, maybe catching and understanding what I'm saying?
At that moment, the boys come around the corner, with the rope and we are back on track babyy. Mali was looking a little wrecked, especially after we learnt that he had to ascend the 45m abseil to unstuck the rope and retrieve it. After going back up, Mali's best guess for the rope jam was a stray carrot bolt beneath the ring bolt anchor which the biner block had been caught on. Next time no biner-blocks, and maybe someone should definitely chop that stray bolt off?? Thank you kindly in advance.
A few more fun jumps and abseils, and we reach the end. An estimated 40 minutes of slippery rock scrambling lay ahead until we reached the exit track, Murdering Gully. A name that couldn't be more fitting.. Not to be dramatic or anything but it was definitely a bit murderous with loose ground and big rocks upon a 400m ascent over a kilometre. Travelling up in a line one after another, there were a few times we had to dodge rocks that were dislodged above us- all a bit spicy after a long day. We ended up finishing just past 9pm, beating Tom Brennan's time estimate of 8-12 hours with an all mighty sub-13. Best day ever!
The next day was a well earnt rest day for sure. With a good sleep in, gourmet breakfast, and good stretch session we managed to drag ourselves on a walk across the Walls Plateau Walk and went for a swim in Kalang Falls. We sussed out the canyon here, but none of us had been particularly keen on it anymore, as it had the same walk out through Murdering Gully. Driving back to camp to play some games and practice some random rope skills, we never made it out of the car before we all konked out.
After waking up from the most glorious nap of my life, we discussed what we had planned to do the next few days. I think we discovered that we had been knackered and our itinerary didn't quite accommodate well enough. A few of us had also become a bit coldy, particularly Mali, who may have spent a little too much time in one particular waterfall. We then decided that we would opt for a more chill canyon the next day and end our trip a day earlier than anticipated in preparation for our Ranon bounce trip soon after. Read Dan's report about that adventure here…
Our final day was filled with a lot of frolicking, jumping and wetness in Dione Dell, another very chill but gorgeous canyon. Taken down by a cold, Mali sat this day out. The rest of us smoothly sailed through a series of falls and varied abseils which made it a lovely way to cap off our trip.
I remember doing my first ever abseil on my first ever canyon in 2021 (thank you to Nick and Matt for instilling this love in me) and hearing the great stories of Kanangra, thinking how wild people must be to ever venture out there. To have been there myself this year, and do these canyons which were once so inconceivable, I am incredibly grateful to have experienced what I have with the best group of people. The skills I have learnt over past couple of years to be self-sufficient in canyons have all been passed down to me by kind trip leaders and cool people that I have been lucky enough to call friends. At least by not completing our Kanangra itinerary this time around, we have an excuse to head out again soon, maybe next season... It is now time to climb. Here's to more adventures!