Our Easter pilgrimage to Mt Arapiles begins with a mad rush to get on the road. With around 13 hours of driving ahead of us, everyone is keen to beat the worst of the Easter traffic and start putting the kilometres behind us. However, despite the overabundance of nervous energy associated with way too much drooling over the glossy new guidebook, plans to leave at 5:30 or 6pm were inevitably delayed, and the first half hour on the road got us 200m along Mountain St to the intersection at Broadway (that’s right, just a stones throw from uni). Despite this setback, and the best efforts of Georgi’s navman to send us to Albury (it didn’t know about 90% of the roads we used on the way, Fail!), Dean, Georgi and I (Michael L) managed to roll into the Pines campground at midday on Easter Friday and carved out a small space amongst the sea of tents for the SURMC campsite. We were quickly followed by the double D (Dave D), Jimbo (James H) and Emily in the double D’s car, while Mick and Sean arrived several hours later after taking the slow road (despite leaving earlier, a classic first timers mistake). Others arriving over the following days were Pete, Gavin, Jesse, Fiona, Tim, Strat, Dave M and Mike.

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Serendipity Canyon at Mt Wilson Blue Mountains, Saturday 4th March 2009.

Attendees: James Henderson (author), Dave Dearnley (trip leader), Kate Randall and Eugene Tam.

Originally the intended canyon was Lower Bowens Creek North, however a number of factors influenced leader Dave to change to Serendipity including; our leader not having done Bowens Creek before, the other three members not having done any canyoning before, Bowens Creek apparently involving more walk in/out and a week or so of rain preceding this trip.

Eug, Kate and myself had arranged to meet Dave (who would be driving) at Pennant Hills train station at 6:37am. At 6:37am Eug and myself alighted the train and peered up and down the dimly lit station looking for a shape resembling that of Kate. As the train pulled away it quickly became apparent that Kate would not be meeting at the prearranged point in space and time. A quick phone called awoke a sleeping Kate in Petersham. Read the rest of this entry »