Party: Joshua “Rocky” Hill, Dan Scheuch
One of the pleasant things about being unemployed is the ability to head off and do a midweek canyon. Chances are you’ll be the only party down in the canyon. So with this in mind I posted an invite on the OzCanyons forum. Dan Scheuch, whom I had never met before, responded to my email and we settled on Thursday.
That morning I headed out from Orange and arrived at Mt. Wilson at around 9.30 meeting Dan at the car park on Wynnes Rocks Rd. After the obligatory introductions and gear shuffling we headed out around 10am. Just as we started out another party drove into the car park; so much for having the canyon to ourselves.
We walked down the fire trail for about half an hour before finding the very obvious ant hill on the right. Taking this as our cue to start down into the gully we followed the on and off again track. It did not take us long to drop into the gully which was quite nice overall with an abundance of ferns and the usual pre-canyon greenery.
We entered the north branch of Bowens creek shortly after which was a pleasant open rocky creek at this stage. After of bit of rock hopping and the like we arrived to where we thought the first drop was. Dutifully suiting up and rigging up the abseil down we went. I went down first, landing into a nice cold pool.
At the bottom I looked up and saw the other party above the abseil. I was a bit embarrassed to find that the abseil could be avoided by a down climb via tree roots; something they did with slight looks of smugness on their faces. Oops.
As we where already suited up it did not really matter and we pressed on. Not long later we arrived at the 8m drop into another deep pool. Dan indicated that he was happy to jump while I was not too sure. So I rigged up and went down to check the depth. At the bottom I signaled that the water was clear. Dan being braver than I happily jumped the 8m.
After a bit of nice open canyon we arrived at the next abseil. Down we went and enjoyed some more swimming. The canyon, while not overly deep or narrow, was quite specky. It reminded me a bit of the Bungleborri around the Banks Canyon exit.
Shortly we arrived at at the junction of the north and south branches of Bowens. We had a nice lunch in the sun. Looking up at the south branch we noticed a nice deep pool and decided to do a little exploring. We found to our pleasure that the pool was quite deep and clear. We then navigated up above the pool and practiced jumping. It was quite good with a variety of jumps that could be done up to 8m or so.
With faffing around for about two hours with lunch and the jumping we decided to head back up. The exit was quite clear with a well defined track all the way to the fire trail. We arrived back at the cars around 3.30 already conspiring our next canyon trip. Overall quite a good trip. Short but with a variety of things to enjoy.