The New Canyoning

Years and years ago – in this instance using the term decades while appearing hyperbolic is actually realistic – I did a bunch of Blue Mountains canyons. Some were commonly done (even back then), like Claustral or Wollongambe, while others saw only a few parties each year (like Thurat Rift). I had no special equipment, none of us had special equipment because there was no special equipment. I used a harness tied from webbing, a simple figure 8 and a locking carabiner. Our gear was carried in doubled garbage bags in regular bush-walking packs. We wore sneakers, had no helmets, wore cast off wet-suits that surfers had discarded as worn out at the local “op shop,” and packed a couple of sangers along with a litre of water. The most advanced piece of technological kit that any of us carried was a compass as navigating out always involved trekking through trackless bush.

Since returning to Australia after a quarter of a century living in the Canadian mountains, I go out every so often and do a canyon or two, but canyoning will never be my real passion sport. That is reserved for climbing. The thing about canyoning, which modern canyoners don’t really want you to know is that, unless you are doing very remote, wet and wild canyons, canyoning is basically a pretty simple sport. You walk to the canyon entrance, down-climb or abseil into the canyon and repeat – downclimb, abseil, walk, maybe swim - until the canyon runs out and then you walk/scramble back up to the top of the escarpment.

Given the simplicity of canyoning I am gob-smacked by the complexity which canyoners feel the need to imprint onto an uncomplicated sport. I saw a picture on a guiding site where some dude had posted an image of the kit he carries on his harness when canyoning.  The items were numbered 1 through 12, but there were actually 27 separate pieces of kit¹ carried on (I would assume) every canyon by this bloke. A fairly conservative cost estimate is $2,000. Yes, you could buy a car for that.  

If you are going to argue “but he is guiding,” hold tightly onto that thought. I’ve climbed beside/behind mountain guides taking clients up multi-pitch traditional routes in the Rocky Mountains of Canada who routinely carry less kit than that. If you need that much kit to walk, abseil, scramble, swim, there is either something serious going wrong or you have fallen into the trap of substituting pieces of equipment for ability.

Interestingly, at least to me, is the current “canyon grade”² for Thurat Rift canyon - V4a2VI. I kind of like that rating, although I think that if you dumped the 30 extra pieces of kit and were even remotely fit, it is possible to do Thurat Rift in a day (we did). Grade inflation is a wonderful thing and proves that “the older I get the better I was.”

One of my guide acquaintances in Canada used to tell a story of heading out at dark from the Abbott Pass Hut³ to rescue a group of climbers who were attempting Mount Victoria. The climbers were fitted out with excessive amounts of equipment (V threads, snow stakes, snow flukes, rock and ice climbing protection) and were moving so slowly and unsteadily that they were forced to turn around long before the summit (most competent climbers solo the standard southeast ridge route). I relate this long ago tale from another country because carrying about excessive pieces of kit has consequences, chief among them an overly slow pace.

It is a strange phenomenon in modern life, which seems over-complex already to the point of stress inducing (think about how many insurance policies the average person has) that some of us are compelled to complicate simple activities with needless and multiplicative bits of expensive equipment. I can’t work out whether people are trying to make simple activities seem complex in order to set themselves apart from others or have simply been hoodwinked by business interests using social proof as a marketing tool.

128 if you count a harness, 29 for rope bag, and 30 for helmet

2Another thing that did not exist back in the day, a canyon grading system.

3The Abbot Pass hut was destroyed in 2022.