Woolshed Creek Canyon

I’d heard several comments about Woolshed Creek Canyon from various friends on kiwi_canyons so was keen to check it out. A late post on the site revealed a couple of online trip reports, which only piqued my interest further.

Trip reports from
Johnathan Carr
David Hume

At 8am, Steph Bayley arrived at Geoff Walker and Sarah Pettigrew’s house, where we packed the car and dissapeared off to Mt Somers. Once we got reasonably close, the road end was well marked with bit ‘Woolshed Creek’ signs. At the substantial carpark, we weren’t that surprised to see we weren’t the only ones in the area for easter.

The track up to Woolshed Creek hut has a couple of short sharp climbs, that left me a little breathless. I was trying to keep up with Geoff and Steph, both ridiculously fit individuals. Steph kept making rude comments about my fitness, so I gave her my pack with the rope in it to try and slow her down a bit..

As we reached the high point of the track, we had great views to the west, out toward the Arrowsmith Mountains. A little further on, as the way descended towards the hut, we got our first glimpse at the Canyon. Looking very rugged and well incised, I was greatly looking forward to getting there, but first we detoured to the hut for a bite of lunch and gear sort.

Ready to go at Woolshed Ck

As we put on wetsuits, harnesses and helmets, the hut occupants regarded us with curious smiles, but didn’t really ask much about what we were up to. I gave a 5 minute ‘Canyon Rope work 101’ so everyone had a basic idea what we were up to. Geoff and Sarah had done plenty of rock climbing before and Steph been on a commercial canyon trip in Europe. Everyone grasped the basics quickly, so it was off down the stream for couple of minutes till it descended into the canyon.

I’d heard various reports as to the location of the first bolts, but scouting round the first bend in the canyon, I saw a pair high on the right hand wall.. With a hand drill and spare bolts in my anchor kit and having read a couple of the trip reports, I was more than happy to commit to the canyon.

R1 5m

As we descended the second pitch, the canyons full glory began, with immaculate water sculpted rock forming a narrow passage onward. The water levels were great. Just enough to make things fun but very safe.

R2 Photos

It was ‘on the job training’ for the others, as I talked them each through the rigging I was doing and gave them a chance where I could to do some of it themselves. There were a couple of spots where I was able to downclimb then spot my slightly less confident counterparts. Steph took to the canyon like a duck to water. Each and every chance to splash around, stand under waterfalls, jump or slide was eagerly taken. Definitely bitten by the Canyoning bug….

Fun times and down climbs

On one narrow section, we spied three bolts high on the true right wall. The drop was only a couple of meters, and we could have rapped, or downclimbed it without too much difficulty, but I thought it would be fun to practise installing a hand line to avoid the flow. I bridged high over the drop and installed the line for the others. I was able to improve the system as people came across and reaveled potential inadequacies. Great fun to practise this stuff in a nice benign canyon section.

Fun practise setting up releaseable traverse lines

I was also able to sequence the team down a few drops using a meat anchor rappel. One of the drops I was able to down climb with some assistance, but another I was able to jump.

Fantastic rock features

Arriving at the second waterfall coming in on the true left, Geoff mentioned he’d already had a little look up the stream. We all scrambled up without much difficulty to find a deep plunge pool with a fantastic looking slide above! I scouted the plunge pool carefully, but before we summed up the courage to slide, we all scrambled upstream a bit further to find a large 50m fall that was worth a sit down to appreciate.

A tiny slide into some very shallow water.. keep your feet up!

Are you sure this is a good idea?

Chucky on the sweet 5m Slide

Back at the slide, we each took turns to do the slide, which was great fun.. Sarah eventually suggested we move on because she was getting a little cold, otherwise the rest of us would have stayed to play a lot longer! Finding a sunny spot just around the corner, we paused for a well earned snack break.

Practise using an Alpine butterfly to isolate the strands,
then rigging a contingency with spare rope for the lower

There was a further rappel into a shallow pool and a little more narrows before the true slot came to an end. From here, we boulder hopped, jumped, swam and slid our way downstream. There were the occaisonal gorgey sections, but no further slot.

Geoff makes a nice 4m Jump

Steph enjoys a low angle slide

The further downstream we went, the more like a boulderfield the river became. A big DoC track maker seemed to signal an end to our boulder hopping, but deposited us back at the river after only a few hundred meters. We followed a couple of other false start tracks until we finally found a good looking one on the true right that eventually took us all the way back to the carpark.

It had been an 8 hour day and although we were tired, all were very pleased with the days adventure!