25m max drop
12.5hrs round trip
Public access
It is a big walk to get in there, but oh man it is worth it. The rock is bullet hard and clean washed. There are lots of interesting aquatic challenges, but nothing too scary. The canyon is slotted throughout, although often not deep, so sunlight pours in. And there are some crazy features, like the ‘cave’ where the canyon walls wrap around each other..
First descent by Richard Bramley, Lee den Haan , Adrian Paris and James W Scoltock January 2018.
We kayaked across lake then hiked up to John Tait with a little side trip up the Arnst River which almost looked like it wanted to be a canyon but not quite, perhaps a short section a bit higher up but unlikely. Stayed the night at John Tait.
What an amazing trip! Quite impressive narrow features. A few undercuts and siphs to be careful with, but all are fairly straight forward to deal with. Somewhat sketchy climb up the side at R5. Escapable in many places. The cave section is truly amazing. On the surface you wouldn’t be able to get into the canyon from the top if you wanted to, that’s how narrow it is!
We added bolts, all bolted abseils are now 2 unlinked ring bolt anchors.
Craig Scott, Jono Lee, Astrid Coterill-Nagels, Joel McDaid and Toine Houtenbos