This was a nice visit to Claustral Canyon with Bob. We arrived at the carpark on the Bell Road nice and early, around 9:30 am, but were discouraged to see a lot of vehicles parked there. At least 3 other cars, but also 3 minibuses. Lots of people in the canyon could mean a holdup at the abseils! We considered a few other options, but then decided to head off but were prepared to change our decision to continue once we had consulted the logbook near the start of the track.
The logbook, showed that despite all the vehicles, there were not that many people in front of us. Two commercial parties, a total of 15 people, and they had both left before 8 am. So we should be OK.
This turned out to be the case.
We soon arrived at the creek, and walked down to the water jumps and then the abseils. No other parties were there to hold us up. We completed the abseils quickly.
It was very dark and gloomy in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Despite this, I set up my camera and tripod and took a few (long exposure) photos.
I continued taking photos as I moved through the canyon. All were taken with the camera mounted on a tripod. This takes time. The lighting was not great – no sunbeams or nice reflected light, but it was reasonably soft and this section of the canyon is always very beautiful –
I think, on this occasion, we were too early in the day for the sun to be in the right position to get sunbeams entering the canyon.
Bob had headed off to the Thunder Junction and I later met him near there. He reported that one of the commercial parties was there having lunch and was about to move off.
At the Thunder Junction, we explored for a short time a steep side gully, then continued on our way. We soon passed the commercial party that Bob had seen. We then arrived at the Tunnel Swim – the water level was low – allowing us to walk through the middle part of the tunnel.
We soon reached the exit and climbed out and around to Rainbow Ravine. Further up we stopped for lunch.
More photos are online here on my website.
Hi David,
Love your exceptional website by the way.
I took my son through Claustral yesterday. I have done it many times but not since the early 90s where I would say it was relatively straightforward and the walk out wasn’t to arduous.
We left our car at 6:15, easily found our way in. We even made time to look at the glow worm cave And arrived at the exit at 12:30 and I envised we would be back at the car around 4. Well first I missed the small track just out of the gully and arrived at a hand rope up a vertical wall. At this point I knew something was wrong and we climbed back down to the correct track. That was easy to follow for a while but we eventually came to a wall with no apparent way forward but I found an indistinct track up to the left. We scrambled up that for some time until it disappeared and we were fighting through thick scrub somewhere around the camel humps. We eventually came to a big slab of rock and the real track magically appeared. It was 4 pm by then. The rest was easy navigation but going back down the old Claustral entry and doing more cannoning was really tiring. We eventually arrived at the car a 6. My son Jake is an avid photographer and got some great shots. He is 20 and fit as hell. He carried the rope the entire way (60 meters). He was stuffed but had a ball. It will be something he will never forget and I am glad I took him. I just wish we could have done it in the time it took you :0).
Regards Richard Young