The Birthday – Canyoning Weekend

About this time of the year a group of friends have birthdays. The custom has been to do a walk to the Red Rocks near Newnes. This year, some of those celebrating could not make it along for one reason or another, and bad weather was forecast for the start of the weekend. So we chose to head to a nice dry camp cave and explore some small canyons nearby.


Nine of us set out – and we had a great weekend. The walk to the cave was short. The cave was smaller than I had remembered by there were overflow caves for people to sleep in nearby.

After getting to the cave and having lunch (jaffles of course) – we explored a small canyon nearby. This was quite narrow and spectacular. We walked and scrambled up the canyon till outs way was blocked by a cold deep pool with a waterfall above. On previous trips I had abseiled in – down the waterfall. The canyon is extremely narrow and this is one canyon not for the portly!

We returned to the cave and some of us set out to see if we could get a view from the end of the valley. We found a nice high cave that gave us a tremendous view of the large valley that the small creek flowed into. Tripods were set up and and we had a good time photo-pfaffing.

The evening was spent around the fire – enjoying fine food and drink. Chuin Nee had made an “interesting” tomato cake that was enjoyed by all.

Most of the party slept in the next morning. I got up early and headed back to the cave vantage point to see if there was a nice sunrise. My early morning walk was not in vain. The large valley was filled with a deep blanket of mist. The mist swirled around as the sun warmed slowly heated it. Several times the mist poured back up into our valley. Henry joined me at this stage and was able to share this amazing spectacle.

 

After breakfast, we packed up and headed out of there valley via another small canyon. It was quite easy to scramble up a few small waterfalls to get out.

Then is was off a short way to visit another canyon on the Plateau. Several waratahs were seen on the way in. They were duly photographed! The canyon itself was quite pleasant – but very difficult to photograph. The lighting was quite flat unfortunately. But we made up for it by photo-pfaffing on the way out – concentrating on the profusion wild flowers around us. And there were a lot more waratahs.

This entry was posted in Blue Mountains, Bushwalking, Canyoning, Wilderness Photography, Wollemi National Parks. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to The Birthday – Canyoning Weekend

  1. Mark says:

    Hi Dave, nice photos!
    Now I know about Broken Spectres.
    Thanks for having me along on your weekend, I hope I can get out with you guys again!

    Regards Mark

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