We drove up early Saturday morning, directly to Tigersnake canyon. Whilst it was an early morning start, the weather was pleasant enough. Tigernsake canyon is located near Newnes Forest. To get there, one drives along the Glow-worm Tunnel Road, and turns off the Glow-worm Tunnel road, just after deanes Siding, onto Old Coach Road. From here the carpark is 4.2km down the road. Due to the easy access of Tigersnake, combined with it’s moderate grade (the caynoning book rates it a 3 on the difficulty scales), together with the fact that Tigersnake is a "dry" canyon, makes it a popular commerical tour group haunt.
From the carpark, walk East over some big logs, onto an old fire trail, which one follows until an obvious track leads down into a creek, and the start of the canyon. The canyon itself commences from a little stream on the side. Tigersnake is effectively broken up into two sections. The first section comprises three abseils through some smallish rifts, through which one must occasionally squeeze. Following this rifty section, the canyon breaks out into a more spacious platform, from which there is a 30m pitch. From here, one wanders through a valley heading 0.5km downstream until the second section of the canyon is reached. Along the way, great platforms of sandstone with 15m shear cliffs (suggesting interesting climbing possibilities) can be seen towering up from the ground. The placement of these plateaus is quite unexpected, as they are often hidden behind tall eucplyts, in an otherwise sparsely vegetated area.
After a brief lunch, we attacked the second section of the canyon. This consists of 2 pitches one short 5m pitch, and the other a 25m, that descend into "classic" canyon, with narrow sandstone walls. The second section eventually begins to widen, where a small sandstone cave can be found (about 30m in length). Finally, one exits the canyon by climbing up a steep track through a break in the cliff. The walk back to the car is a pleasant stroll taking about an hour, along an well used track.
John knew a good camping area fairly close by, whose locality was ideal to Deep Pass canyon (which we were to do on the following day). That night, somehow Chris managed to get into a fairly extensive argument with Verity and Niki regarding the treatment of aboriginal children in the 1950’s-1960’s…
To complement a relaxing weekend, on the second day we did Deep Pass canyon. Deep Pass is a particularily pretty canyon, that involves no pitches, can be done in both directions and takes about ½ a day. For the better part of its length, the canyon has walls about 5m apart and 20m high. Whilst we were there, the streamway had a reasonable flow rate (say 2L/sec), which, when combined with a lack of sunlight, often resulted in quite slippery rocks.
About two-thirds of the way through the canyon a makeshift bridge can be found, constructed out of a tree branch and some sacrificial (and I should also add, quite dodgy), rigging rope. Whilst the canyon is reputably a dry canyon, it can become a full immersion canyon, if you fall off the log. Towards the end of the canyon, the streamway opens out into a wide pool, complete with waterfall and a nearby sunny rock from which to eat from. This swimming pool would make for a fantastic escape during summer.
Finally, the canyon breaks out into an open flat grassy camping area (furbished with pitt toilets), which makes for an ideal lunch spot. Flowing beside the camping area, is a reasonable sized river, and opposite to this is a 30m high sandstone rockface, upon which some good climbing can be found. Whilst he was waiting for lunch, Matthew "apparently" scrambled up the side of the rockface, supplying a victorious salute at the tip of the rockface (see picture) to the sunbathing audience below. Feeling left out, Chris decided to follow on up. Unfortunately for Matthew, Chris also managed to find the rifty bypass to the rckclimb, thus spoiling some of Matthew’s thunder.
On the walk out, we came across some (in John’s word’s), some "dodgy chaps", who were looking for Deep Pass canyon. Whilst John is never a person to mislead anyone, there is nothing wrong about witholding information from anyone. Just like telling a story or a joke, there are always things you may feel you want to omit.