This canyon trip even started with bad omens - first with Julie pointing out all the cemetaries and panel beating shops along our way, and then the all-too-cold temperature read-out so proudly dispayed in Lithgow McDonalds pointing out that yes, although it was 9:00 am and sunny, it was still only 2.8 degrees outside. Brrrr. It was to be a cold day.
Aside from myself, Geoff McDonnel was the only Person in the group of eight to have attempted this canyon before. He, however, was cheated right at the very edge of the canyon, when a party member conveniently dislocated their shoulder and had to be assisted back to hospital. I, on the other hand, had been cheated in our previous attempt, when the impressive underground section had been flooded and we had to bail out and walk over the top. And so it was, that no-one had been through the ill-fated underground "star-lit" section of the canyon...
An early morning drive up for all involved saw us get off to a late start of around 9:50 am - which in hindsight is probably too late for this canyon in the middle of winter when the days are so short. Our party’s slow walking pace, combined with our navigational entertainment saw us have lunch at the cayon edge at around 1:30pm. Our two GPS units completely failed to help during our walk in through the untracked scrub on the ridge-top west of Starlight. Although they consistently gave the same readings, they were also consistently at least several hundred metres off our true location.
We reached the abseil into the dark section soon after. Not having been into this bit before, I ventured down with both apprehension and prusik loops, and was immediately impressed by the dark chasm and imposing waterfall that greated me... a little more water than I had expected !! Nevertheless, I managed to cross the pool at the bottom without getting my feet wet, and the water entirely disappeared soon after. So with enthusiasm, I charged off into the darkness, intending to confirm that the underground section wasn't flooded before the others abseiled in.
I went through a fair distance until the canyon narrowed right down to a sqeezy bit with a sandy floor. Faced with a slightly squeezy climb down, but an obvious continuation of dry canyon, I decided that I had seen enough and went back to call the others through.
Everyone was suitably impressed with the abseil, and the darkness of the chasm beyond. I waited for everyone to come down, and only got the first inkling of trouble as the last person was coming down. (?) had gone off exploring, and now returned to ask 'did you go as far as the water?'... uh-oh.
After frantic discussions, we decided to leave the rope in place, while I tackled the waist deep pool conveniently located just around the corner from where I had initially turned back. It looked cold, and lead away out of sight around the twists and bends of the canyon. Although it was damn cold, we were lucky in that the waist-deep section was only around 3m long. There followed several ankle deep bits, and two more unpleasant thigh-deep wades. So I had to go right to the end, then go back to call the others through, and then do it all again a third time to get out. I suspect that this was all a little more than the beginners, Betty and Julie, had been bargaining for. All future parties should make sure that the first person into this section checks the entire length of the dark section, and that they carry prusik loops in the event of having to back out. We probably would still have gone through had we known the water was only waist deep, but it would have been nicer to give people the choice while still at the top of the abseil. It is easy enough to walk over the top of the dark section, and abseil in soon after if it does turn out to be flooded.
After that, we made it through the rest of the canyon in reasonable time, reaching the Wolgan River soon after 4:30pm. The sun was due to set soon after 5:30pm, and I thought we'd make it back to the cars shortly before 6pm. Unfortunately, the road back by the Wolgan turned out to be a little trickier than I remembered. There are a couple of confusing branches after the shale mine, leading to different parts of the industrial ruins. In particular, there is a low road that follows the river, and a high road, that seems to be much more direct.
Through our different walking paces, our party had become slightly separated by this point of the track. Geoff McDonnell and co. were well ahead, and had chosen the low road. Julie and I reached the intersection, and at Julies encouraging chose the high road (she remembered it from a previous trip). We intended to follow it a little way to confirm it, and then coo-ee back to Nick and Betty, who we assumed were somewhere not far behind us. The replies to our coo-ees then seemed to come from the low road, below us, and we assumed that they had chosen this path. However, I got more concerned by the time the paths again intersected, and decided to stop and wait for the other group. Julie and I were most surpised, then, to see Geoff and co. appear from the road behind us - somehow at our slow pace we had overtaken them. So, Nick and Betty were even further behind, and were probably going to chose the longer low road.
So we did not begin to get concerned until about 1hr after we had returned and they still had not arrived. We then sent David to cross the river in his car and wait at the end of the road, with instructions to come back in half an hour if there was still no sign. After the half hour had gone, we sent another car and three more people to find David, and to set off with warm clothes and any food we had left to look for them. We agreed to go to the Police by 11pm - around 4 hours after they could reasonably have been expected back.
By this time (8pm), the temperature was already almost zero degrees, and still dropping rapidly.
Meanwhile, Julie and I waited. After an hour, we decided that it would be better to drive to the top of the Wolgan Valley, and get mobile reception and call the Police to at least inform them of the developing situation, so they would be in a better position to quickly respond if it later became necessary. And we waited by the side of the road for any sign of our other cars to come past.
Luckily, Nick and Betty were found by the search party. They had reached the intersection, and after checking each one for a distance, they had decided that they didn't know which road to take. So they stopped in the middle, and built a fire to keep warm and dry their clothes, and waited for rescue.
They returned to the campsite, and when our car was missing decided to head to Lithgow. They of course spotted us by the side of the Newnes Road, and stopped. The police were informed all was ok soon after 10pm.
There are many lessons to be learnt from this incident. It is the responsibility of the tripleader to keep any party together and in sight whenever possible; it was failure in this that led to this situation. Even if you are confident that people are in earshot - that is not always enough.
Secondly, mobile phones can play a vital part in any rescue situation. The tripleader should either have one, or find out if anyone else has one before setting off. By driving to the top of the Wolgan Valley, we were able to use the mobile phone to put us into contact with the police, and also wait for the return of our own search party (who had to drive past us). This early police contact would have then helped a rescue team get underway very soon after our own search team had come back with a negative result, if this had actually occurred.