UTSSS

The day promised to be fine with a hot afternoon: not a good forecast for a long trudge up a westerly facing ridge in late afternoon but a great forecast for canyoning.  Being all early starters we, therefore, met at the Claustral Canyon car park bright and early and were on the track as the second group at about 8:30am.

As we descended from the final saddle the light rustle of the wind in the leaves became a steady roar.  The water was up.  Fortunately, at this point it was not high enough to turn around.  Despite there being no rain this week, the base flow was still profound due to the unusually high rainfall Sydney had received over summer.

The group then scrambled along the creek and donned the wetsuits up when the wades became too deep.

Continue reading ‘Claustral Canyon’

O’Day 2010 was a resounding success for the club as we had a huge sign up, with lots of really enthused people.  See a couple of dodgy photos of the stall that Steve and I were on.

Present: Andrew Baker, Tessa Robson, and about 20 people who were equally as keen to destroy some sycamores.

Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) is a native of Europe and that belongs to the Maple family (Aceraceae). Unfortunately, this fast growing deciduous tree is also very invasive. Within the Jenolan Caves Karst Conservation Reserve, sycamores have spread rapidly from the area around Caves House to almost the top of Oberon Hill. These trees grow in such densities that they outcompete the native vegetation and in many places there is no vegetation except sycamores. It has been estimated that since the 1980’s the area covered by sycamores has doubled in size.

This was the first of two volunteer Sycamore control weekends held in spring 2009 by the Lithgow-Oberon Landcare Association in conjunction with Jenolan Caves Trust and National Parks and Wildlife Service. The aim of these weekends is to eradicate some of these troublesome trees.

Continue reading ‘Jenolan Caves Volunteer Weekend – Sycamore Control’

Present: Andrew Baker (L), Julie Burton, Tessa Robson, Michael and Jodie Rutledge, Chris Turner, Stephen Baker (UTSSS), Brad Smithson (UTSSS) and Robert Vorbach (UTSSS).

Saturday

I picked the cave keys up Friday afternoon, being keen to have a big day in Spider Saturday. Chris was also super keen and wanted to get everyone up really and be in the cave at 7 am. Fortunately sanity prevailed and we opted for a more leisurely 7 am wake up (still rather early by NHVSS standards). Jodie and Michael hadn’t been well the previous week and opted to go for a walk up the valley and visit ‘Café Cave’. The rest of us headed down to the Playing Fields and entered Spider Cave at approximately 9 am.

Continue reading ‘Caving at Jenolan August 22nd and 23rd 2009′

There will be a few combined landcare days at Jenolan later this year to drill and poison the nasty invasive maple trees in and around the reserve.  If you’re interested in attending these weekends (5/6 September and 31st October/1st November) please contact me and I’ll pass on your details.

Pete Brady

Hi all and welcome to the Club’s new website.  We’ve changed to a blog engine so check the syndication options to keep up with the latest posts.

Over the next while we’ll be moving all the old pages and trip reports over to the new site so stay tuned!

As part of the 20th Anniversary celebrations for UTS, we were asked to abseil down the western face of the UTS Tower builind (building 1).

For years we’ve all looked up at what has been called the Ugliest Tower in Sydney and dreamed of what it would be like to abseil off it. Now was our chance!

Continue reading ‘UTS Tower Abseil’

Last weekend was the annual first semester beginners trip. Numbers were looking like a huge weekend with 16 people committed at seven days out. But like all the best laid plans as the execution due closer there were a number of drop outs which left us with only eight people arriving at Wee Jasper:

Continue reading ‘Wee Jasper Beginners Trip (5-6 April 2008)’

Baker, Stu, Tessa and I planned on going canyoning yesterday and were originally going to head up to Whungee Whengee at Mt Wilson. However, on the drive up, with the large volume of water on the road we decided that Whungee might be a bit too dangerous – so I’m soft and don’t like swimming multiple sumps in tunnel swims – and we decided to go for Claustral instead. Besides, Tess had not been through there before.

Continue reading ‘Claustral Canyon (Dec 2007)’

An epic trip 21 hour trip down Thurat Rift, and exiting over the famous Thurat Spires… Peter tells the story.

Continue reading ‘Thurat Rift & Spires’