It wasn’t the nicest day by normal standards; cloudy, drizzly, cold, but as odd as it may be, I really like days like that for canyoning. It means you don’t sweat profusely on your walk into and out of the canyon. It means you can actually wear your wetsuit, reasonably comfortably, while walking in to the canyon. Lets face it - we’re canyoning - we’re going to get wet no matter what we do, what harm is a little drizzle?

So with more joy than most would expect, we walked toward Serendipity Canyon from the Mount Wilson Fire Shed carpark. It is a reasonably easy walk, and we didn’t have too much difficulty finding the path down to the start of the canyon, although you do need to keep an eye out for it.

The first abseil was pretty average, shortly followed by a small jump-down/climb-down from a ledge which could cause troubles if you landed badly. A short walk downstream brings you to the second abseil, which is indescribably beautiful - the photo attached simply doesn’t do justice to the reality of it - and from there on it was just beautiful area after beautiful area.

I was really impressed with nearly everything about this canyon. The abseils were interesting (never easy), the jump ins were fun, and the interjoining sections were simply beautiful.

The third abseil, an incredible narrow slit in the canyon over a chockstone at the start, only to enter a cave-like section underneath a large chockstone, actually caused us some trouble. After everyone in our party had abseiled we started to pull the rope through only to have it get jammed (probably a twist) just after the end of the rope left reaching distance. Rob and I had to climb up a section of the waterfall, and then have Rob boost me so that I could reach the rope and pull it back down a bit to relieve the jam. We jiggled the rope a bit and managed to pull it through without any incidence, but this does remind me of the ever so simple risk of only carrying one rope in a canyon. On one hand we weren’t really at risk here, because there are no more necessary abseils after this one, but on the other if this happens in a canyon where you need to abseil again in order to get out, you can easily get trapped in a canyon because of a jammed rope.

Following that abseil, there was a couple of shallow jump ins which needed to be done with care, and after a short swim and walk we found ourselves at the end of the canyon in side this incredible cavernous section which runs straight into Wollangambe Two Canyon.

The crazy thing about getting out from Serendipity, is that when you get to the end of the canyon, and you look across at a 1meter wide and 1 meter high ledge which drops down 40 or so meters into Wollangambe two canyon, and you are quite certain that that ledge goes nowhere - well, thats the way out. Down on our hands and knees we crawled for about 20 meters along this tiny ledge before rounding a corner and finding a path winding up through very steep rock faces, rapidly taking us straight up to the top of the ridge. Only 20 or so minutes before we reached the entrance track, and before you know it, we were back at the car.

Overall the trip was really very very good. beautiful scenery throughout the canyon, great fun doing th abseils, jump ins and swims - Serendipity provided pretty much everything you want in a canyon (no slides though).

Shane Greenup

Links

Browse the Serendipity photo Gallery

Read the Serendipity Guide