Urban Canyoners: Wollangambe One Canyon

Monday, 3 December 2012

Wollangambe One Canyon

2/12/12

Party: Steph H, Neil H, Luke S, Richard C.

After a long night of 21st parties, I managed to get up in time to do another canyoning trip. This one is an easy beginner canyon, which is much wider than Du Faur’s canyon with more and much longer swims that is by far the most popular and accessible canyon in the Blue Mountains. There was also a fair amount of bouldering and rock scrambles.

Grade: 1 (easy), no abseils, wetsuits needed.

Track Notes:

We started the day to the right of Mount Wilson’s Fire Station at 9am and walked until we reached the entrance. About 1/4 of the way down we came across a commercial group of 15 people and decided it would be best to go down ahead of them as quickly as possible. After finding the right way down, we descended into the gulley that would reach the canyon. As this was Luke’s first trip, he was quite impressed and excited with just walking and climbing down the gulley haha. After reaching it we found 3 other people already there putting their wetsuits on.

After getting ours on and blowing up our lilo’s, we jumped in the water ahead of the commercial group and so began our trip. I was amazed by the grandness of the canyon and how long, wide and deep it was and a bit further down we found a good spot to jump off the cliff walls into the water which was so fun.

We had lunch about midday and found the exit about 2.30pm where we took off our wetsuits and started climbing back. There was a small section of exposed rock with a difficult climb up that was a little dangerous but very fun. After being in the cool refreshing water all day, the walk back was extremely hot and humid which slowed me down a lot.

We got back to the car at 3.30 and drove around Mt Wilson to have a look around and also see the Cathedral Reserve Camp site that we’ll most likely be staying at in the near future.

It was a GREAT day with great company!