Empress Canyon

Nearby Wentworth Falls in flood
 Source: PolAir

This summer had the hottest day on record, 45.8 degrees and today as I write it is cold and rainy. Its been a summer of extremes a few hot days and plenty of not so hot ones. I have managed two canyons so far, Serendipity and Empress. Stephen has done many more. The video we made of Empress, should really be titled “Catherine does Empress” as Stephen did most of the videoing so I was the star.

Nearby Wentworth Falls and has been spectacular in the last week with all the rain. 18 people had to be rescued from the area and the rescue helicopter, PolAir took some great photos of the waterfall in flood.

Stephen and Shaun also made a few more canyoning videos with a GoPro camera. Whungee Wheengee which is a narrow canyon at Mt Wilson with lots of icy cold swims and some tricky abseils and Yileen Canyon which ends with a 60 metre abseil into the Grose Valley.

Serendipity Canyon

Well I dusted off my wetsuit, found my whistle and once again set off into the wilderness with Stephen. Most of the canyons these days Stephen does with people much fitter than me. This weekend he made an exception to take me on Serendipity Canyon and show me a new exit out of the Wollangambe.

On the way down to the start Stephen showed me where the exit track met the main track. I seriously contemplated waiting there for him but it would have put a serious dampener on the day. So off we trekked down the side of Mt Wilson to the start of the canyon. The day was overcast so all the greens of the canyon stood out well as we clambered, abseiled, climbed and swam our way down the creek and waterfalls. The obligatory yabby was found and I even went first down the two last abseils. It was great to be out in such a beautiful part of the mountains.

Once we reached the Wollangambe Stephen has fun jumping off the cliffs into the river. Then we watched the water dragons descend on us to see if they could share our lunch. The trek out was ok, I just kept plodding along. About 500 metres from the car we came across a group of 6 guys in their 20’s navigating with their smart phones. With limited gear and eskies they planned on doing Wollangambe 1 & 2 and camping out overnight. Torrential rain was forecast from tonight and the next two days, so I hope they made it out.