Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Woolshed Ck, Mt Sommers

We'd hoped for a descent on the previous sunday, but torrential rain and flooding rivers saw us call it off. But only two days later, the weather looked good enough to try again.

The rivers on the plains were all high, but running clear which gave us a bit of hope for the canyon. Walking up the track beside the lower river section, we began to have a few second thoughts..

We climbed over the small hill on the canyon rim, with great views out towards the Winterslow range, even spotting another canyon to do (Trifalls Stream). Having a snowball fight in your wetsuit before entering the canyon signalled to us that it might be a little chilly.. but hey, if the water is all frozen on the hills, there will be less in the canyon.



Trifalls Stream... on the tick list for this canyon season


Yes, that white stuff is snow and I'm about to go canyoning...

T he waterlevels in the canyon were reasonably high, but still manageable. Sections that were previously easy downclimbs were now whitewater. On several occaisons we spotted one another with throw bags and used a drift anchor to help negotiate one section.

One side stream entered the main canyon, creating wall to wall white water, with considerable usptream flow in one of the eddies. Powerful enough, that even with a strong jump and powerful swim, we couldn't cross the pool. Had to go behind the waterfall to keep in the green water in order to make it past.

The higher water made the canyon much more challenging and enjoyable. Normally you have to swim a few sections, but today we had to brace off the canyon walls occaisonally to slow us down as we zipped along downstream.

The slides were awesome with the extra flow and the walk out down the main river required attention to routefinding to avoid ending up in some nasty rapids..

We took heaps of video footage, hopefully a movie will appear on youtube soon. Thus, we hardly took any stills and the ones we did take were in the tame sections!

A great day out!



Second drop


Toine exits a calm section to look at the next rapid


Trying to catch some sun to keep warm


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