We shot down to Bungonia late Friday night and set up camp for the weekend. There were 5 of us in total - Me, my fiance Catherine, flatemate Ryan, and two guys from the UNSW Outdoors Club - Stewart and Steven. We woke early Saturday and four of, after signing in at the Ranger station, headed off down the yellow track towards Jerrara Creek Canyon.

We took a few photos from the lookout at the end of the yellow track, then headed past the little sign which tells you that the track has already ended down into the gully which drops you down into the Creek. We got into our wetsuits, climbed down the first little rock face, and set up the first abseil. We all repelled down it without problems, swam around the corner, climbed over some rocks for a while, jumped in some more pools, and before we knew it, we were at the second abseil.

The second abseil is pretty easy really. Its fun because it is 40m so you have plenty of time to enjoy the sights as you slide down the ropes, plus as you near the bottom you really feel the stretch of the ropes, but the whole cliff has a positive slope so it isn’t scary or difficult at all. You land in a large shallow pool at the bottom, and it is easy to get some nice photos of the waterfall from a rock over the side of the pool.

Climbing over that rock onto another rock, down the side of that into a pool, which you swim through to the chock stone which makes the 3rd abseil. This part was my favourite part of the whole canyon because I really wanted to jump it. Steven abseiled down first to do a depth check. I know from the previous time that I had done it that the natural depth is deeper than you can reach, but of course you always check the depth each time in case new logs or boulders have fallen down into the water. We then sent Ryan down with the camera. I then got ready to jump… Now this is quite a scary jump. 7m is pretty high anywhere, but I have no problem with anything up to around 10m - the problem with this jump is that the canyon gets narrower and narrower as it goes down. The water surface is only about 2m wide, which means that if you are slightly off when you jump you could hit the wall instead of the water. In fact, when I jumped I managed to land pretty well, but I still found myself scraping down the wall surface underneath the water (after the water had slowed me down greatly - no harm done) as the wall continues to slope inwards. Anyway, you’ll see it all yourself on the video which I will hopefully upload tomorrow.

From there the end is really just around the corner. We took our wetsuits off, had some snacks, then started the perilous ascension. Damn slate-esque flaky rocks. You spend half your time climbing up rock faces which could come out if you pulled too hard in the wrong direction, and the other half of your time dodging the rocks pulled out by the people above you. Needless to say, we all wore out helmets as we climbed up, but Ryan still managed to cop a small rock in his cheek (small rocks still hurt after falling for a while). The climb out is really quite exhillarating though - every now and then you need to stop and look around. There is a huge drop to your right, down into Jerrara Creek Canyon, and there is an even bigger drop to your left, down into Bungonia Creek Canyon - but That’s OK, just don’t fall and everything will be fine…..

I’m sure it isn’t really that bad. It is all a trick of perception (I hope…). We were climbing a ridge, not a sheer cliff, so if anyone did fall, you could easily grab a tree or something well before you fell any great distance. There was always ground immediately below you - just steeply sloping away from you ground… The real danger was just the rock slides. If you do accidentally create a rock slide into the canyon below, make sure you call out as loud as you can. “Below” is what I was always told. I think some people call out “Rock” or something. Just make sure you do it in case you are create a very deadly rock fall onto a group of canyoners behind you!

Anyway, we eventually got up the top, caught our breath, took some more photos of the view, then wandered back to camp.

The next day Cat, Stewart and I went for a quick trip down into B44 Grill Cave. I have done Grill about 3 times already, and yet still couldn’t get past the Squeeze - Mud Slide section (it kept taking us back to where we had come from!) . Anyway, spent a few hours down in there, out of the heat and away from the flies (I hate flies), but eventually had to head back up to pack up our gear and head back to Sydney for an early exit.

See Also

• Bungonia State Conservation Area
  
• Jerrara Creek Canyon Guide
  
• B44 Grill Cave Guide
• Jerrara Creek Canyon Photo Gallery
• B44 Grill Cave Photo Gallery

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.

• Juggler Canyon Guide
• Juggler Canyon Photos 

It was a bright shiny day up at Wentworth Falls on the 14th of November as we headed towards the upper section of Empress Canyon. We walked to Edinburgh Castle Rock, then a short walk around to the bottom of it and we dropped into the gulley through the hanging swamp (which we later learnt shouldn’t be done any more because of the ecological impact on it from the erosion).

Happy to be in the creek finally, somewhat out of the direct sunlight and heat, the water was beautiful and refreshing on the feet. After walking in the small stream for maybe 30 minutes we eventually reached the first obstacle - a waterfall over a chock stone which needs a hand over hand rope down into the shallow water below. I personally find hand over hand ropes to be about the most difficult thing to master in canyoning - The problem with them is that you have to be able to hold your entire weight on one hand, on a small rope (while lowering your second rope down to the next knot) while usually in awkward positions jammed up against large boulders. To make it worse, you usually have to do this over large jagged rocks under an indeterminate depth of water, so if you slip or let go, you are probably going to twist, sprain or break an ankle. Luckily none of that has happened on any of my canyoning trips so far though, and hopefully it never will!

After climbing down this waterfall, I attempted to get another photo under a waterfall (like the classic photo we got from Serendipity canyon the week before). None of the photos we took really turned out, but looking back on the series of photos clearly marked where it was that I lost my camera… You see, I bought this you-beaut little head mounted video camera to wear when canyoning so that I could hopefully capture some spontaneous footage to put into the video logs from each canyon. It wasn’t overly expensive, but it wasn’t free either. Anyway, I forgot that I was wearing it (un-secured more importantly) and while I was trying to stick myself underneath this waterfall, apparently the camera came off my head. I didn’t realise this until right near the end of Empress… So by now either someone has found it, or there is still a video camera sitting at the bottom of this waterfall waiting for someone to fish it out. Not sure whether its waterproofness can stand up to several weeks or months of being submerged (pretty sure it can’t) but maybe it still works….

Anyway, on with the canyon. Shortly after the hand over hand there was a nice 4m or so jump in onto a sandy bottomed pool which ends the upper section of the canyon. Immediately after that jump in you cross the walking trail which brings people down into Lillians Glen. The track crosses the stream again and that is where the main canyon starts.

A beautiful waterfall and pool are just off to the side of the start of the canyon, so we took a group photo there before heading into the canyon. As we entered we crossed paths with a large tour group. We didn’t want to get stuck behind them on the abseils at the end, so we pushed through the rest of the canyon pretty quickly. We also met Owain there, who is an old member of the University of New South Wales Outdoors club (or the Bushwalking and Mountaineering Club (BMC) as it was known back in the day). He is now leading tour groups through canyons around the mountains (and probably rock climbing and anything else you could want to do), so if you are inexperienced at canyoning and want to hire someone to guide you through it, be sure to ask for Owain!

All of Empress was quite fun. There was nothing particularly difficult about any section of it, but there were several small jump ins, several short swims and all of the usual fun stuff you get in canyons. Then when you reach the end and look out over the final abseil, it takes your breath away. After walking through such a narrow canyon for so long the open exposure you encounter as you look out over this huge drop is quite startling. The abseil actually isn’t very difficult at all (be careful of your fingers as you go over the lip) because you get a couple of ledges to stand on an a sloping wall to walk down most of the way, but before you get a chance to look down the actual drop, and when you see it for the first time, it can be quite frightening to consider going over the edge…

While we were setting up our abseil rope, I climbed back up and jumped into the pool a few meters back from the abseil. Its a nice 5m or so jump, and I have no idea how deep it is in the pool (I didn’t touch), but that is something you can do while awaiting your turn to abseil over the waterfall.

Once we were down the bottom of the falls it was the usual change of clothes out of the wetsuits, repacking our packs, and the slugging it out straight up a zillion steps up the cliff face taking us back to the top of the ridge where we walked back to our car.

A great canyon for an easy day’s trip. Very accessible, but also quite crowded for that same reason. Obviously some experience abseiling is a must before attempting the abseil at the end of the canyon, although it should be noted that it is possible to walk back up the canyon and walk back out the way you came down.

• Empress Canyon Guide
• Complete Empress Canyon Photo Gallery