Canyoning at Empress Canyon

---

Today we had one of our most adventurous days of the tour!

One of the things on my list of to do's was Canyoning, and we have spent the day in the Blue Mountains abseilling and canyoning.

We started off at a site near the 3 sisters, and were abseilling down cliffs of 5m, 10m and then 30 metres respectively.

Having climbed quite a bit indoor recently, the abseilling was pretty easy for us both, but it was a great view down the cliff sides further below each climb - the valley continued on for several hundred metres below each abseill site!

We had a couple of drops on the 30m cliff - and it was good training for the afternoon's climax!

After a picnic at Wentworth Falls we headed down the Valley of the Waters - a 600m cliffside walk down to the Empress Canyon.

The Empress Canyon is one of the more famous and popular Canyons in the local area. In 5mm wetsuits and climbing harnesses we headed down through the river. For the uneducated, Canyoning basically involves climbing down through a valley in the river itself. The steep sides of the gorge were really beautiful, and there were several area's we had to climb over rocks, jump gaps, slide down long water slides in the rocks and jump off small waterfalls - usually 1.5m to 3m in height.

Towards the end of the route we got to the spectacular Empress Falls. Empress Falls is a 35m waterfall further down into the valley, and after some waiting we got to abseill down the waterfall in turn.

The abseill was mental - the waterfall was making the rocks very slippery so it was an exciting climb down. Clare got a bit freaked out when she slipped and was spinning round, whilst I started my abseil with a slip and ended up hanging upside down, looking down 30 odd metres and about to die! I had to untangle myself from the guy's rope that was below me that had caused me to slip and make my way on down!

We've found some photo's on the web to give you an idea of what it was like!

To enhance the experience the heavens opened and a thunder storm kicked off overhead.

The only harsh thing of the trip was the climb back up the cliffs on the way back up to the bus! Hundreds and hundreds of steep cliffside steps!

On this company's website their are some short video's of people going through the Empress Canyon - you'll have to have a search through the site as I can't give you the exact links-

http://www.high-n-wild.com.au/movies.html

---