Juggler Canyon
Is was a stinking hot day on November the 20th 2007, the day which we had set aside to do Juggler Canyon (sometimes known as Pilcher Canyon). We drove to the Katoomba Airfield, turned off onto the 4wd track and drove to the powerlines - only to quickly realise that we had misread the directions after searching in vain for the path. We drove back up the dodgy 4wd track and parked the car in the obvious car space and walked down the other fork of the road this time, as directed by Rick Jamieson’s guidebook.
The walk in was pretty quick - before you knew it we were scrambling down this wet moss covered rockface, trying not to slip and fall. We managed to make it over the first obstacle without needing to pull out and set up the ropes, and then we proceeded down the canyon, scrambling over rocks and fallen trees for quite as long time before eventually reaching the first abseil.
The first abseil was really nice. Crystal clear water flowing into a beautiful clear pool at the bottom (which we all did our best to avoid stepping in!). Immediately upon hitting the bottom of that abseil the second abseil was within sight up ahead on the ledge to the left. Abseiling down that, we realised that there was a second drop off just beside us which would be a little too difficult to abseil down, so we decided to just continue the one abseil over it rather than setting up a second 3-4m abseil. And once again, immediately upon finishing that abseil, the third abseil was not far off from another ledge on the left hand side of the canyon.
The third abseil is the largest, a little over 20m high and all overhanging (gloves really help I discovered). The exit is indeed quite tricky when you use the bottom anchor point; there are two anchors on the same tree - One around the roots, and one from a branch up at about stomach height. We opted to use the bottom one because that would be the most secure/safest anchor, however it is quite clear why the higher anchor is there, the lower anchor makes the immediate overhang exit very difficult when your anchor is below your center of gravity. You have to be able to commit and just let yourself drop a meter or two to clear the overhang. Anyway, the abseil proceeded fine and brought the abseiling section of the canyon to an end.
The rest of the canyon was just more scrambling over rocks and fallen trees - sometimes the rock scrambles were quite difficult with large slippery areas where it was difficult to stop yourself from sliding down a small drop onto rocks. We managed to make it through without any broken ankles though, and when we reached the tourist trail on the other side of the main creek, we walked downstream to Beauchamp Falls and had lunch there.
Walking back upstream from the falls we managed to get lost a couple of times, following the wrong branch of the track - once it turned back and followed the cliffline, which led us to a large rockslide to the left side of Beauchamp Falls. We walked back to the creek and followed it upstream onto realise that we were meant to cross to the otherside at some point, but we missed it. Nonetheless we managed to get back on the tourist track easy enough in the end and walked up to near the end of Grand Canyon where we easily found the trail which took us back to our car.
