4 seconds ago 2009-12-15T05:40:27-08:00
Just a few hours' drive west of Sydney, Australia's largest city, are the Blue Mountains. Locals call them "the Blueys," and they've always had a special place in the heart of writer-photographer Jonathan Chester: he was married on the edge of a cliff at Evans Lookout, in what he calls the "Cathedral of the Outdoors." Here too is where he learned his climbing skills in the sport known as canyoning.
KATOOMBA, New South Wales, Australia – Canyoning is descending narrow slot canyons by hiking, swimming, down-climbing or abseiling (rappelling). Expeditions, usually lasting a day, can be exhilarating, exhausting, and occasionally even deadly, particularly when waters rise rapidly in narrow slot canyons. Hypothermia is another danger. Broken bones are not uncommon — people misjudging jumping down ledges instead of abseiling. Then there are those who just fall.
We met our guide at 8 a.m. at High N Wild's office in the main street of Katoomba, just up the road from the quaint hotel we kipped in for the night. Blow me down if our guide wasn't a lanky, fit-looking Englishman with a slightly plummy accent by the name of Chris Darwin. I knew Chris from when I lived in Sydney about 18 years ago. He is famous on one count for being the great-great grandson of the Charles Darwin, though he is deservedly well known to the conservation community in his own right for his support of the Australian Bush Heritage Fund.
It was good to be in the hands of an old friend. You don't really ever want to try canyoning without someone who "knows the ropes." It is very easy to get lost — or worse — in the Blue Mountains.
Tiger Snake Canyon is one of the choice winter canyons in the "Blueys," so called for the striped snakes found in the canyon. These three- to six-foot long snakes have highly toxic venom, and until recently held the record for causing the most Australian snakebite fatalities. More potential spice to our adventure.
We drove for about an hour in a beat-up van to the Wollemi National Park, where we picked up the road to Tiger Snake Canyon, the last half of the journey on dirt track through the bush. Every few minutes a kangaroo would bound off into the scrub. We walked for an hour to the top of the escarpment where we donned our gear. Didrik Johnck and I coached our two companions, college student Aaron McGrath from Canada, and Andrew May, a surveyor from the U.K., both of whom were new to the sport. Under Chris's direction and leadership we began the descent.
Abseiling, or rappelling as it is known in the U.S., is the main technical skill of this sport, but canyoning also involves a bit of caving technique, working your way through very narrow gaps in the rock. So tight are some that you have to take your pack off and push and grunt to work your body through. It's even harder if, like me, you have a bit of a middle-age spread.
The first, short, roped descent put us in a dark grotto with a pool at the bottom. There was no way to avoid getting wet feet, but this is par for the course in canyoning. At this time of year there is not much water in the canyons, but what there is can be freezing cold as little sun reaches down into the inky depths.
Next came a 60-foot abseil down a sheer cliff. Chris managed the top safety rope here, which in this instance was a wise precaution. Halfway down we were suddenly spinning free as the wall became an overhang. This added spice to the descent for the novices, but Andrew and Aaron took it in stride. This took us down to a forested valley that led to a half-mile scramble to the crux descent.
The top of the final abseil was through an unlikely-looking entrance, a narrow hole that is probably the source of the canyon's alternate name, Bottle Neck. Chris had also been bubbling about this drop all day, and it didn't disappoint.
One by one, we all made the 70-foot long abseil into the dark, deep chasm. Eons of water sluicing down the canyon carved the coarse, sandstone walls into smooth waves and caverns with domed roofs. It was so dark at the bottom that photography was quite a challenge. When all had made the drop we assembled in a sandy-bottomed hole just upstream, where we had a belated lunch. A shaft of light filtering down gave us just enough light to see.
Chris was concerned about completing the trip before dark, so after lunch we quickly pushed on through a hundred yards of tight squeezes to where the canyon opens out. At the exit of the slot canyon, a grove of massive tree ferns, some as tall as 30 feet, gave the place the feel of a prehistoric forest. You could easily imagine a dinosaur popping out from behind a boulder.
As we hiked back along the top of the ridge, the sun set and dark clouds loomed overhead. We heard claps of thunder in the distance and rain began to pelt down. A few miles away, the thunderstorm dumped four inches of hail, making the road almost impassible on the way back to Katoomba.
Luckily this hadn't happened when we were down in the guts of the canyon, or we might have joined the statistics of those who lost their lives in Tiger Snake Canyon. As it is, we simply added our names to the growing list of enthusiasts of the new sport of canyoning.
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