24/10/2018
Geoff, Guy, Gabby, Ev, Nichole, Laurie and meeee
I’ve had some half-baked plans involving Closet canyon floating around in my head for a few months now so when I noticed Geoff put it on the calendar for the Upper Blue Mountains Bush Walking club I called a favour and got myself a day off work.
Laurie and I met the others at the picnic ground and we headed off to the car park, sorted ropes and set off on foot over Galah mountain.
Last time I’d been out along this trail Bill Clinton was PUSA, Dolly the sheep was front page news, you could still drive out to the start of the Breakfast creek trail and we were getting smashed with the biggest hail storm I’ve ever been caught in.
Anyhoo, The trail had now regenerated into a narrow foot pad and the wild flowers were out in force.
We made good time to the end of the main trail but from there the faint trail came and went and was, at times easy to loose. Geoff, Guy and Nichole were sharing navigation duties and kept us basically on line.
Gabby had a small run in with a spider however, disappointingly, she failed to develop superpowers from it (Unless of course she was keeping them secret to use for evil…)
And a short time later said creek dropped into a canyon. A slightly smelly canyon due to a large dead wombat polluting the pool midway down the second drop
And then there was a a scramble down before you had no choice but to drop into the wombat soup
The creek then opened out and there were some scrubby abseils in the creek. Apparently it’s possible to exit here.
Why would you thou, when the show stopper is just downstream.
The creek canyons up again and we are greeted by a very Butterbox-like chasm
Traditionally done as 1 long abseil Guy decided the risk of the ropes getting snagged in the the sticks jammed at the halfway ledge warranted doing it as two and so set a re-belay
leaving Laurie to belay I scrambled down a little further and found a comfortable rock that offered a great camera angle.
What’s the view like from your rock? Asks Gabby
Pretty good. says I. I’ll move over so we can share it.
Before I knew it, it went from “My rock” to “Our Rock” to “Gabby’s rock” and I was left wondering how the hell that happened. Maybe she did get evil superpowers after all.
From there it’s a short journey down to the junction with Rocky creek and then upstream a bit to the exit.
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. ― Neil Gaiman
Party Size: 7 all experienced
Time: 10hrs car to car relaxed pace with plenty of phaffing (Photo and otherwise)
sleepwhenwearedead 