Grand Canyon
On the 31st of October 2007 Rob and I went for a walk through Grand Canyon, up near Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Neither of us had done it before so we were flying blind for the most part, only know what the little ‘Canyons Near Sydney - 4th Edition’ handbook told us in its 17 lines of text on the canyon.
The walk in was pretty straight forward; its a well signposted tourist track which actually follows the entire canyon along from above. The natural tunnel that it goes through is pretty cool too. Shortly after the tunnel is the beginning of the canyon, however that isn’t the main entrance to the canyon. Instead, we continued following the tourist path until we found the abseil entrance.
The abseil entrance is really very cool. It is scenic, the abseil itself is really quite nice, dropping you down off an overhang into this gorgeous cavern of moss covered rocks and ferns. Unfortunately, the abseil was really the only exciting part of the canyon. There were a couple of swims, and the canyon was beautiful pretty much the whole way through, but after the abseil you are pretty much just bush walking in a very scenic stream. There were no real jump ins, no slides, no challenging bits or extra abseils. Basically you abseil in, then spend the next couple of hours walking down to the exit point.
I’ve probably made it sound really bad now, and that isn’t the case at all really. It is a nice canyon, and if you just want a short day wet canyon with beautiful scenery, then this is a perfect canyon for it. Almost impossible to get lost on your way in and back out, the walk is easy, and the whole thing can be completed in a few hours.
Shane Greenup




