A small group of us headed out to a heavily fogged Mt Tomah in the Blue Mountains early last weekend to do Gaping Gill, a canyon listed in Jamieson’s “Canyons Near Sydney” guidebook. We parked at the Claustral Canyon parking area and checked all of our gear was in order before heading out along the beautiful grass covered ridge that takes most people down to Claustral Canyon. Instead of following the track all the way though, we were to continue along the top of the ridge, eventually heading straight south-west into the bush once we reached the end of the ridge.

This sounded easy, but the regularity of patches of lawyer vines in the area made this simple task really painful… After scrambling over a small moss covered boulder field, trying to avoid getting ripped apart by the lawyer vines while also trying to avoid slipping and twisting an ankle on the large boulders, we navigated our way across the top of the cliffline and found our way into Gaping Gill Gully.

Once in the rainforest section of the gully, the going was so very much easier and we quickly walked down the steep hill into the increasingly narrow ravine. The plants around us were beautiful, and the everything was so fresh and clean. We climbed over rocks, down tree roots and all of the usual canyoning sort of stuff, but it was true what we heard about Gaping Gill - “It’s not a really a canyon”.

The two abseils are both beautiful - I mean really beautiful - and not too difficult either, although both are quite high (about 20m and almost 30m on the second one). And the gully can get quite narrow at sections , stuck between two vertical cliffs either side - but these narrow sections are brief, and the ‘canyon’ feel is really not there. Gaping Gill is really just bushwalking down a narrow gully with a couple of good abseils thrown in for entertainment.

Of course once we were at the bottom of Gaping Gill we needed to walk up Thunder Gorge to the exit track. Thunder Gorge is far more canyon-like than Gaping Gill, and involved getting wet in waist/chest deep wades a few times.  Just as Gaping Gill was a truly beautiful gully to walk through, Thunder Gorge is equally beautiful. So just because something may or may not be ‘technically’ a canyon (whatever that even means), don’t doubt for a second that the walk is worth it. (probably only the one time though ;))

See Also:

• Gaping Gill Photo Gallery
• Gaping Gill Guide Article

There was little traffic up to Mt. Tomah that morning coming down the M4. We made it into Katoomba pretty quick, then round and into the Bell Range ,where we met Shane and Julie waiting for us.

It was 8:30 on the dot, so this expedition was going to start on time.

After we logged into the Claustral visitors book, one car was left behind while we drove the others down the highway to Ranon’s entrance.

The path in was pretty much expected of the Blue Mountain bush, with no clear or well travelled path to be seen. We raced into the thick at top speed though, eagerly looking forward to the days activities.

After about 30mins, Julie the trail leader noted we had not vied far enough and we found our selves peering over a fairly high drop. Instead of backtracking and looking for the ‘traditional’ canyon entrance, we thought that our current location was as good as any from which to abseil in. In hindsight this was a great decision, as it turned out to be a fantastic abseil. So over we went. The abseil required a 60m rope, then the 35m and 50m tired together to see us down to the bottom. What an abseil – straight through the thick line of ferns buried into a mossy cliff face. We landed in ankle deep water; in some of the most amazing scenery I have ever experience. And that’s how the day started.

After another 45mins of level hiking though sometimes very narrow paths to fairly open paths, the water levels started increasing, so we decided to get into our wetsuits. We found a small waterfall to wet our appetite with, and took a few pics posing under it.

The next step was a 3m jump into a pool, then straight into a series of very narrow corridors.

The first proper abseil of the canyon was straight forward 15m into a pretty deep pool, which led onto another narrow corridor. Though this was the first time doing this canyon for us (Jon and Trev), we were told by the more experienced canyoners in the group, that water levels were much higher than normal, due to recent rainfalls. This meant there was a significant amount or water pumping over all the abseils we did, possibly increasing the difficulty, but definitely increasing the fun!

I have heard many theories why this canyon is named the way it is. I reckon it’s because of the flow of the land - everything just ran-on beautifully from the previous landscape.

The second abseil was brilliant, Julie scaled down and waited in the pool at what we thought was the bottom – but the canyon lived up to its name and the descents just kept on running. This was just a temporary deep pool, which required us to swim across before attempting the second half of the abseil. Immediately after this there was yet another 25 abseil to navigate, all whilst the water whirled around us and roared in our ears as it tumbled down into each successive pool.

At the bottom of this series of abseils, Ranon runs into Claustral canyon, just down from the black hole of Calcutta. Shane took Trev and Jon a little bit upstream to the bottom of the hole, since we had not done Claustral before, and it allowed us to get a feel for the eerie enchanting beauty of the darkened natural hallways of Claustral.

At this stage we went a little further before finding a small sand beach, where we stopped for lunch and ate while admiring the contrasting landscape and scenery all around us. After lunch, we again took a quick detour to see something special. Shane led us into some small darkened caves, which required us to slither through some narrow gaps, before looking up in the darkness to see a mass of beautiful blue glow worms all around us!

We headed towards the exit after this, navigating and scrambling over and around rocks for another hour or so. There were a few swims, as well as some challenging hand-over-hand descents and jumps, which kept the adrenalin pumping until the very end.

The hike out took us approximately and hour and a half. We discovered that leeches are attracted to Shane like bees to honey, as several of them decided to hitch a ride up the mountain on his legs.

We returned to our cars at approximately 5pm, exhausted after a long day’s canyoning, but elated after having a fantastic day out, in which a good time was had by all!

By Trevor and John

See Also:

• Ranon Canyon Photo Gallery
• Ranon Canyon Guide Article

I organised a trip through Claustral Canyon because I was constantly being pestered by people to do it. I had already done it four times, so wasn’t in a rush to do it again - even though it is right up there as one of, if not the best canyon in the mountains, I’d rather keep doing canyons I hadn’t done before. Nonetheless people wanted it, so I organised it, and before I had a chance to think about it, we had 6 people wanting to go and suddenly I was worried that we would get too many people in a canyon which has a very slow and cold choke-point that you don’t want to try to get through with a large group of people. To make it worse, I realised that it had been regularly raining, or at least constantly drizzling up in the mountains for at least 3 weeks by this point. So while the there had been no real rain over the 5 days or so leading up to our trip, there was also no chance for the water to really subside very much thanks to the constant cloud cover and drizzle.

Seeing as it hadn’t rained leading up to the day we went though, I didn’t call it off and the six of us went ahead anyway. We signed in to the new logbook - we were the fourth group in it I think. It was placed there by NPWS shortly after the recent fatality in the canyon only two weeks before our trip.

The walk down was straight forward enough, as was most of the first half of the canyon. I won’t spend long on the details of this trip because I think the photos and the video (to follow) do it far better than words, but a few things are worth mentioning. Firstly, the water level was higher than any of the other times I had done Claustral, although it was still far from dangerous. This did make things more interesting though, particularly the abseils which were flowing quite strongly and making a lot of noise. We had some difficulty on the abseil, but I will leave that story up to the video to tell.

One high point of the trip which I had never done before, was going for a short walk upstream at the Thunder Gorge junction. We dropped our packs and started heading upstream to see what was up there (I knew there was something of note, but couldn’t remember what). We reached a gigantic rock slab blocking the route which we could have probably climbed over, but I was starting to think it wasn’t worth it and that we should just head back - We were starting to get hungry and I knew that there was still a fair distance to cover.

Just as I was about ready to head back, Steven found a small tunnel to the left hand edge of the boulder. It was only about thigh height, and you had to wade in to water, but I was happy to send Steven in and let him clear out the innumerable spider webs that were blocking us… Luckily we did though, because inside that small tunnel was the coolest thing I had seen for a long time. First of all there was a narrow beam of sunlight which found its way in through all of the rocks and boulders and canyon walls above us, and it illuminated this narrow circle of water really nicely. But as soon as I passed through that beam of light the tunnel stopped and a larger cavern opened up, and as I stood up and looked around I was just blown away by the light show in front of me. The roof of this tiny cavern had the most brilliant glow worm decorations all over it. It was just so unexpected to see, in the middle of the day, at the end of this tiny little tunnel. Definitely worth checking out if you find yourself doing Claustral Canyon. Unfortunately it is all but impossible to take a photo of it, so you I can’t even show you how cool it was - you really will just have to go and see it yourself.

The whole canyon was incredibly beautiful though. Even having done it a few times before, it is still shocking to see the way the ferns glow just as you walk out from the bottom of Calcutta Falls. The way the sunlight occasionally illuminates the water drops falling in from above. The green-ness of the whole canyon. Always impressive.

Anyway, here is the video, see some of it for yourself!

See Also:

• Claustral Canyon Guide
• Claustral Canyon Photo Gallery