A Glorious Failure
The unconquered Heights of
Arethusa Falls
by Dorothy English
from the Bushwalker Annual -
1938
OUR first attempt to storm the Arethusa heights took place in October
when eight of us set out, encumbered with
fifty ft of rope, hope
in our hearts, a map,
and various superfluous necessities in the shape
of eating and sleeping equipment.
On a red-hot Sunday morning we left our camp close to
the
junction of Blue Gum
track with the Rodriguez-Pass-Grand Canyon round tour and headed up the
valley towards the Fal An indefinite track following the creek soon
petered out in a tangle dense river growth,
so we bore up the hill on
our right till we reached
higher ground where the
tree-line virtually ceased as
it met the rock
canyon wall.
For half a mile a
wallaby track followed around a somewhat crumbly ledge hardly more
than a foot or two wide in parts, then came
to sudden dead stop on
the wall of the precipice, and we found ourselves under the spray
of a sixty foot tumble of water—Arethusa
Falls. Above our heads, with the branches of
the lower one swaying just within
reach, grew two small stunted bushes, distorted in
their growth by the impact of many floods and the fact
that they relied for sustenance on mere handful or
so of soil strewn in several
small niches and crevice in the cliff face.
We tested these very gingerly,
for if they had pull
away in our hands it would have been
good-bye. But they held 01 weight, so
one by one the packs
and the party were pulled and pushed i till we
all stood on the
slippery rock level from which the waterfall to
its leap into
the
valley below.
Breasting The Current
We
were now in a high rocky gorge through which
the water roared i that we had
to yell to make ourselves heard. A little
reconnoitring soc disclosed the fact
that it would be easier to proceed up the
watercourse rather than to attempt
the side wall, although the former proceeding
involved some exciting swimming. By means of some smart manipulation
of the rope we
managed to slide the packs down from a higher
ledge o rock to the lower level where
our swim would bring us
out. Then ti whole party took to the water
and surged up current like a herd of
cattle
There was another waterfall at the end
of this section, some six o
seven feet in
height, but a hasty examination of this showed us
that a: easier means of getting up must
be sought. "It's a pity we're not salmon,"
gurgled the half-drowned leader of
the vanguard, bobbing up at* down
in the foam, semi-dazed
by the impact of water.
Some four feet up
the dark rock wall was
a neat circular depression
like a plughole with the plug removed,
and attention was
directed to thi as being the only
other possible way out. To step
into a depression four
fee up a vertical wall is difficult enough on
terra firma, but when the take-of is an
unstable fluid and all the mob around
are treading water am hurling
bright remarks about to
the tune of "Stick to it! After all, yoi can only break
your leg," well, the
task is more than doubly difficult. I speaks
very well for the whole party that
they all did get up at last Then we
shouldered packs and
continued our way, but gingerly sliding
over the slippery rock and making a handrail
with the rope when necessary all of us
more or less wet and somewhat chilly, with the roar
of th< water continually
dinning in our cars.
A Gloomy Canyon
The walls
of the canyon now closed in till
they were hardly more than fifteen yards
apart and almost touching overhead, thus closing out
the light of day so
that we went in an eerie gloom, climbing over
huge boulders, sliding1 foot by
foot up slithery waterways, squeezing and
creeping under rock ledges, snaking along in
a fine powdering of rock sand that had
lain undisturbed for centuries.
In some places it
was necessary to swim, floating
our packs before us
wrapped in ground-sheets
to keep the water out.
We might have gone ten miles or
we might have
gone less than half a mile—all sense
of time and distance was forgotten
in the din of
many waters and the feeling
of being the only
people left in the world, and above all the
conviction that we must go on—go
on, finding a way to
surmount all obstacles that might bar our
progress.
It came as a rather demoralizing shock, then, when
one of
the party suddenly
announced the time to be three o'clock. We
now realized that we were chilled to the
marrow, and hungry too, having eaten
nothing since breakfast at 7 a.m., being too
engrossed in the hazards of the trip to
think of dinner. When we found ourselves
up against a
forty foot sheer wall
of rock so smoothly polished that even
a lizard would not find a
foothold there, and over which a waterfall, passing
through a cleft in the rock, hurled itself
into a deep pool below, we decided to call it
a glorious failure and
retrace our steps,
vowing to return again in the near future as
no mere waterfall was going to give
us best.
A Second Attempt
That was
some months ago.
Early spring
ripened into mid-summer and the
hot sun warmed the icy mountain creeks—a
decided advantage when most of the day
is to be spent swimming
in a dark, sunless gorge. In the interim, also, several members of the
original party had
been mountaineering in New
Zealand and, rightly or wrongly, were thought to have improved in climbing
technique.
So another assault on the unassailable was planned. We were to be a
smaller, and therefore less
unwieldy party, and planned
to travel light, to the extent
of carrying no superfluous clothes or cooking
utensils and discarding tents and sleeping bags in
favour of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Jack Debert and Gordon Smith left on the Friday night for Katoomba with
the intention of exploring downstream from
Minnehaha Falls as far as possible on the
Saturday, and they were to return and meet Bert Whillier and me at
the Arethusa Falls camp on Saturday night. The next
morning we would retrace our previous route
with a minimum of lost time, and the
added advantage of
knowing what to expect between the farthest
point we had reached in the Gorge, and
Minnehaha Falls.
We had already been informed that the Rover Ramblers
had put this trip down on their programme for
the same week-end, but were rather unprepared for
the zeal with which their members patronized official
walks —there were no less
than thirteen camped at
the Arethusa Falls campsite, all ready and
eager for the morrow's doings. As
there was no sign of Gordon and
Jack, Bert and I amalgamated with the little
boy scouts' party, and soon after 7 a.m. next
morning we broke camp and
proceeded up the valley.
If it had been a long
business getting eight
of us up the first waterfall, you can imagine
what it was like getting fifteen up,
but we had great fun. The whole fifteen surmounted
the first water hazard in goodly style,
despite the fact that one or two of the young lads could
not swim. They were
given scoutly assistance by their comrades till we
all stood
re-united on
the other side.
Realizing that it would take more time than we
had
at our disposal to
shepherd such an enormous party further up the gorge we decided to
try our luck up the left hand wall of the
canyon. A display of
spider-monkey tactics, plus a very
satisfactory manipulation of the rope
and all the mob sprawled among their packs on a damp
ferny slope some hundred feet up the canyon
wall. A sally further upstream proved
fruitless, so we were obliged to turn back on our tracks, as it
were, but on a higher level, and follow along the
rocky cliff face. Here we found a pleasant
little tree, some forty feet high, which swayed out from the
side of the cliff on its eight inch diameter trunk.
With the aid of this tree we
scrambled and hauled our packs up the
cliff face. This operation
took much time, and one of the
lads had the
misfortune here to lose hold on his pack,
which dropped right back
into the water in the canyon
below. It was retrieved by dint of much
effort, and we continued upwards.
It was now ten
o'clock. Someone suggested he had heard
shouts down below—possibly Gordon
and Jack, but being uncertain on the subject
we forgot the matter
forthwith.
Still More Hazards
Rounding a ledge we found ourselves in another canyon, equal in hazards to
the one below. To cut a long story short, we followed the same crawling,
swimming, clambering, sprawling, snake-like tactics here, and about three
o'clock gained the flat heights of the tableland. It was raining a fine
mountain drizzle; we were wet through and hungry, so when we heard renewed
shouts in the gorge, proving beyond doubt the presence of Jack and Gordon,
we merely marvelled that the voices still seemed to come from the same
place as they had at ten o'clock, then shouted a hearty "good-bye" and
departed, catching a train home about five o'clock. The next day we heard
from Gordon and Jack that they had got down the canyon from Minnehaha
Falls for quite a long distance. Then rather than retrace their footsteps,
they camped and continued down on the Sunday morning, hoping to meet us
coming up. They were stopped, however, by the canyon floor dropping away
into a waterfall chute some sixty feet high, so here they stopped and
yelled. Then they went away, to return later and yell again, but finding
that Bertie and the Englishberg and the drove of little boy scouts did not
materialize they called it a day and went home.
Thus ended the second attempt on Arethusa Falls to Minnehaha Fall via the
waterways. You will see that it has not yet been done. The little boy
scouts have done something just as good (or perhaps better), in their
achievement, and the Bushwalkers have done the gorge upstream to a certain
spot which we shall call X, and downstream to a certain spot which may or
may not be X, but the original course has eluded us a second time. David
Stead has seen fit to include it on the official S.B.W. Walks Programme
for next year. All those innocents who think to attend this walk,
expecting it to be just an ordinary creek-bed trip, be warned!
|