Claustral Canyon, Blue Mountains National Park

Well what to say about the amazing Claustral Canyon…first up a word of warning. For anyone that might be inspired to venture to Claustral Canyon please note doing so is extremely dangerous and has resulted in death for a number of people. It should only be undertaken by those who are fit and experienced in abseiling and rock climbing. So onto my experience…
An intrepid group of four, including Tim Wrate (photographer), Lewis Fogerty (photographer/fearless canyoneer), Craig Margieson (fearless canyoneer), and myself ventured into the depths of Blue Mountain’s canyons. The long and hard day started at 5.15am with a quick sunrise shoot at the popular Three Sisters, the most photographed rock formation in the area. I’ve never been happy with my photos from this location and this morning was no exception.
 
Anyway back to our lovely motel to ‘gear up’ before driving North to the start of the track. This involved packing a 50L dry bag with a minimal camera setup (Canon 5D MkII, Canon 17-40mm F4 lens, remote release, circular polarising filter, spare memory card, GoPro) housed in a medium Internal Camera Unit (F-Stop camera bag terminology) along with an emergency blanked, a warm wind proof top, a small towel, and a compass. The dry bag slid perfectly into my F-Stop Tilopa Country backpack along with 2.5L of water and food for the day. The whole thing weighed about 12kg with my tripod strapped to the side, this was the minimum I could take. At the start of the trail (side of the road, point marked on map) on went my thermals, a full length wet suit, harness, board shorts (to protect harness and wet suit), canyoning shoes, and helmet. We set off at 7am, little did we know we wouldn’t return for another 17 hours.

After the abseils and a 50 meter swim we were now at the canyon floor, this was our chance to photograph. Unpacking and setting up my gear took some time. Even after taking every precaution to keep our gear dry the canyon floor is a very wet and humid environment. I soon gave up on my polarising filter which I planned to reduce indirect light with. Rattling off a few shots before packing everything up to swim a short distance before unpacking it again slowed things down. What felt like 10 minutes was probably more like 40, it was time to leave.
We then proceeded to scramble down lots of rocks using hand lines on the harder bits working our way towards the exit. This took the best part of two hours, the time approached 5pm. This gave us 2 hours for the exit before it got dark. The instructions for the exit were “Scramble up the exit gully for about 20m and then traverse left under the cliff to Rainbow Ravine”. We choose to ignore the second part for some reason and headed straight up the gully for about 100m. This was tough climbing for the inexperienced me, I was dry retching with fear, oh joy! We finally made it out after a hard slog only to realise that we had messed up and had to abseil back into Rainbow Ravine which was 50 meters below us. Having 60 meter ropes doubled up meant it would have to be done in two stages. The first a 25 meter abseil then a difficult traverse to a small ledge where all four of us clung onto for our dear lives. It was Tim’s turn to freak out with lots of gasps for air and shakes of the head. This was not good and we only had a few more minutes of day light left. Not the best time to be going back into a canyon.