YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW

Reconsidering canyoning ethics

Good ethics has long been a part of responsible canyoning. And with more people than ever getting into the sport, it’s important we do the right thing by these sensitive environments. Ryan Hansen speaks with four legends of NSW’s Blue Mountains canyoning community to hear their takes on canyoning ethics, and on how new techniques can reduce our impacts.

Words & Photography RYAN HANSEN

(unless otherwise credited)

Martine abseils into Claustral Canyon, one of the Blue Mountains’ most spectacular canyons. Beauty aside, these canyons are also sensitive, and potentially dangerous, environments. Sustainable and safe canyoning approaches ensure that we, and future generations of canyoners, can continue to experience their brilliance

Canyoning is

My Favourite

outdoor pursuit. They’re exquisite places, canyons. But they’re also incredibly sensitive environments. And with more people—not just in Australia, but internationally—discovering canyoning’s rewards, it’s imperative—possibly now more than ever—that we revisit the discourse around how to canyon ethically, both in terms of environmental protection and personal safety.

But it’s not just the number of people canyoning that, for me, has brought to the fore the question of what’s considered ethical; on a personal level, a canyoning experience—while in a relatively remote part of the Blue Mountains—led me to re-evaluate the approach to canyoning that my wife and I take. At the time, we’d been canyoning regularly for a number of years, usually in more popular and easily accessible canyons, but gradually transitioning into more remote trips. This particular trip was to an infrequently visited canyon system, where—after making our own route to the canyon’s head—we were soon overlooking, from a ledge fifteen metres above, an upper constriction. In the interest of safety, we set up a bomber new sling with a rap ring off a sturdy tree, with a clear line down to the canyon floor. Sweet as! Down into the canyon we went, and we didn’t think any more of it.

Until later. Upon reflection, I wondered: Was that the best decision we could’ve made? Safe? Yes. Ethical? Probably not. The chances of another party—of which there’d probably only be a handful each year—finding that same tree and using the same anchor were slim. Yet we’d left a big lump of plastic and metal there just so we could feel safer abseiling. Was our personal safety more important than minimising our environmental footprint?

While canyoning definitions and experiences vary depending on context, in the area we most frequently visit—NSW’s Greater Blue Mountains—canyoning most often involves traversing narrow, deep and dark slot-like chasms, commonly (but not always) requiring abseiling. Even within this region—without looking elsewhere in Australia, let alone overseas—there are many distinct canyoning areas (some within declared wilderness zones), where canyons have different geologies, features, obstacles, and appearances. But it’s not just canyon features that vary; so too do the ethics—the approaches to canyoning believed to be appropriate. Sometimes there might be a written code; at other times it might be an unspoken and informal—but still applicable—set of ethical principles.

Some time ago, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service began promoting a Canyoners Code of Ethics. It was split into two sections: “Don’t wear the canyons down” (environmental sustainability); and “Don’t let the canyons wear you down” (personal safety). While it contains Blue Mountains-specific advice, it also recommends general ethical practices, with a backbone of Leave No Trace. These practices are transferrable not only to various canyoning contexts but also to many other outdoor activities, most obviously bushwalking.

To discuss its relevance and continued application—and to also, myself, develop a more informed and considered approach to canyoning—I caught up with four of the Blue Mountains canyoning Brains Trust: Tom Brennan, Rachel Grindlay, Tim Vollmer, and Craig Flynn. Amongst the wealth of canyoning wisdom they shared with me, there was one common phrase that really hit home: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

You don’t know what you don’t know. A true but incredibly complex statement. How can you identify what it is that you don’t already know? How can you learn what you don’t know you need to know? I don’t have all the answers to these questions, but my hope is that the following discussion of canyoning ethics enables you to critically reflect on what you already know and, ideally, what you don’t know yet that you want to learn more about.

PART 1: ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Tom Brennan and his wife, Rachel Grindlay, have been bushwalking and canyoning—including exploratory canyoning—in the Blue Mountains for the best part of two decades. Tom’s website (ozultimate.com) and Rachel’s blog (grindlay.org) together provide a wealth of information, photos, detailed notes, maps, trip reports and anecdotes to inspire a lifetime of bushwalks and canyons (hell, they’ve certainly been two of my biggest sources of inspiration and information!). They also organise and facilitate regular trips with their outdoor club, Sydney Bushwalkers (SBW). (Ed: And Tom also wrote the track notes for the Lower Colo Gorge Loop in this very issue; see page 130)

For Tom—who fondly recalls an exploration-rich period from 2010-14 when he and a friend would pore over aerial photos and map out what they thought would be canyons and passes worthy of exploration—a major point of contention, in an ethical sense, has been the publishing of notes for canyons in wilderness areas. As a publisher himself of track notes, it’s a subject he’s particularly conscious of. The Wollemi Wilderness— home to many hundreds of canyons—is NSW’s largest gazetted wilderness area; Tom says that keeping little-known canyons unpublicised, without explicit direction and notes, not only minimises damage to these sensitive environments but also preserves “some wilderness and some sense of adventure.” It also fosters more of a willingness to do the “leg work” and develop the self-sufficiency and aptitudes to explore them ourselves.

When it comes to promoting environmentally sustainable canyoning, Rachel says it fundamentally comes down to developing a conservation-based mindset: “Is the bush there for us humans to have a playground, or is it there for the creatures that live in it, the things that grow there, the sense of the untouched? If your premise is coming from that nature should be protected, it’s much easier to position ethics about not placing unnecessary stuff and not leaving impacts.”

On the subject of “leaving stuff”—specifically, anchor materials like rope, webbing, maillons, and, sometimes, bolts (which, by the way, are contentiously becoming increasingly widespread despite their installation being illegal in Blue Mountains canyons)—Tim Vollmer says the answer to what’s the best way to do things is almost always, “It depends.”

Tim, another prominent figure in the Blueys’ canyoning fraternity—you can read about many of Tim’s exploits at fatcanyoners.org—advocates that different canyons require different solutions: “If you’re in a wilderness area, you should be looking to have as little of an impact as possible, and ideally no impact. If you’re somewhere that’s a trade route with commercial groups going through, then what you have there will be different.”

Remote canyoning is also nothing new to Craig Flynn, the blogger behind Sleep When We Are Dead (the title alone indicates how much time Craig spends outdoors). Craig explains that when you go to a wilderness canyon without slings, bolts, or obvious signs of prior visitation—meaning you must problem-solve your own anchor solutions—it feels like you’re exploring the canyon for yourself. These senses of discovery and self-reliance are what wilderness areas are prized for, and a liberty that Tim argues shouldn’t be taken for granted: “I think people don’t realise how lucky we are to have those [practically untouched wilderness areas] and how quickly they can be modified and lost. Once they’re lost and modified, we can’t get that back.”

Portraits,

DON’T WEAR THE CANYONS DOWN:

- Keep your group to a small and manageable size (4 to 8 people).

- Don’t place bolts, or alter rock surfaces in any way.

- Avoid leaving unnecessary slings and remove old slings.

- Keep to creek channels, avoid sensitive creek banks and soft vegetation.

- Avoid establishing new abseil routes or footpads – keep to existing paths, or spread out in trackless terrain.

- Walk carefully in rocky pagoda areas – flaky rocks and thin ledges can break easily.

- Avoid marking tracks (signs, cairns, broken branches). Each group should have at least one competent navigator.

- Don’t publicise ‘new’ canyons or those in wilderness areas, to preserve opportunities for discovery and to minimise impacts.

- Use fuel stoves – fires scars are unsightly, attract rubbish and encourage vegetation damage.

- Avoid camping in canyon environments.

-Dispose of human waste away from canyons.

- Leave the crayfish and other wildlife alone.

- Carry out any rubbish.

FIRST SECTION OF THE BLUE MOUNTAINS CANYONERS CODE OF ETHICS

DON’T LET THE CANYONS WEAR YOU DOWN:

- Take responsibility for your own safety.

- Be self-reliant – know the route, and have adequate food, water, safety and first aid gear, maps and clothing.

- Know how to swim and self-rescue on ropes.

- Hypothermia is a real risk – wetsuits and spare warm clothes are advisable.

- Teach beginner abseilers prior to canyon trips, rather than in canyons.

- Give way to faster groups.

- Avoid peak use times in well-known canyons if possible as overcrowding can cause delays and safety problems.

- Leave details of your group, route and expected return time with a responsible person.

- Ring 000 in case of emergency.

Rachel also emphasises that canyoners in other parts of the world—like the US, where natural anchors are comparably much harder to find than in the Blue Mountains—have demonstrated that anchors can still be constructed while leaving minimal or no impacts. Despite some of these overseas anchor-building techniques, like sand and water traps, not necessarily being applicable in Australia, she says what it’s founded on is a creative mindset. And that’s certainly relevant here.

Tim, Craig, Rachel and Tom all advocate that some non-invasive canyoning techniques widely used overseas could become more integrated in Australia. Notably, fiddlesticking—which involves wrapping your rope around a natural anchor like a tree or chockstone, securing it with a stone knot fitted with a retrievable plastic device (the fiddlestick), and then releasing it via a pullcord once the last person has abseiled—is widely used in the US, and could be used in wilderness canyoning settings in Australia. Fiddlesticking not only enables more creative anchors but, in true Leave No Trace fashion, means that no permanent anchor materials or waste are left behind. (To learn more about fiddlesticking and its application, check out Tim’s blog: fatcanyoners.org/2018/08/29/ fiddlestick-retrievable-anchor. Tim also facilitates fiddlesticking workshops.)

Also, despite their suspect name, the use of meat anchors—where a person uses their bodyweight as an anchor to assist others hand-over-handing or abseiling down a drop, and then downclimbs the same drop with possible assistance from their group below— is also a useful and sustainable canyoning practice, when implemented carefully.

To further eliminate environmental damage in canyons, there’s one factor—it’s bleedingly obvious to me now—that Tim says can be the single biggest protective measure: avoiding a rescue. In just one canyon rescue, explains Tim, “You have bunches of emergency personnel coming in, you’ve got choppers overhead, you get erosion, you get trees down, you get all sorts of damage. You’ll do more environmental damage in that scenario than in all the other canyons you do the rest of the time.”

So, setting aside unavoidable accidents, what’s the best way to prevent a rescue? Proper preparation. It’s the perfect segue into Part 2.

PART 2: PERSONAL SAFETY

Most of us have had, at some point, a dodgy outdoor experience; if we haven’t, we usually know of someone who has. Tim tells of a time when—with only four or five canyons under his belt—he attempted, with an equivalently inexperienced mate, Hole in the Wall and Banks canyons on the Newnes Plateau in one day. Neither canyoner had knowledge of catchment sizes or alternate exits. There’d been buckets of rain the week prior; dramatically higher water levels meant they very nearly couldn’t reverse a necessary creek section. They were forced to lasso an upstream boulder to assist themselves up a usually gentle cascade, but which was then a pounding waterfall. “It’s only as I’ve gotten older and more experienced that I look back on that trip and realise how fine we cut it.”

In short, even the best of us have had close shaves. As Craig puts it, “There’s always going to be inherent risk with canyoning.” But the bottom line, as Tim highlights, is that we need to know what we’re getting in for and, more importantly, how to get ourselves out of it. We need to be prepared. And two major components of good preparation are: 1) Having quality gear and 2) Having the right skills. Speaking of good gear, Tim set up his Canyon Gear store (canyongear.com.au) four years ago to give locals a source of high-quality, canyoning-specific equipment; he stocks all manner of ropes, descenders, and accessories particularly suited to Blue Mountains’ canyons. Other important gear to carry includes a topographic map, a canyoning first aid kit—equipped for dealing with hypothermia—and a PLB or emergency-communication device.

In terms of skills, Craig—an experienced canyon guide and workplace trainer—has been at the forefront of helping Blue Mountains canyoners upskill. During lockdown, he was the main face behind a series of forty Workshop Wednesday

IMAGES - LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM

The point of reflection: Martine rigs an unsustainable anchor in a wilderness canyon. Where’s that fiddlestick?

A fiddlestick-style (smooth operator) anchor setup. The LAMAR removes the two safety ‘biners and, once down, pulls the pullcord (blue line), releasing the smooth operator; the knot unfolds, and the rope can be retrieved.

Credit: Tim Vollmer

Tom acting as a meat anchor, enabling Rachel to hand-over-hand down a short drop. Credit: Jon Bell

Leaving anchor tat behind is far from ethical. We hauled this rubbish out of two remote Wollemi canyons

A fiddlestick in action. No permanent anchor was left behind. Credit: Craig Flynn Good scrambling skills are highly beneficial, and can be the determining factor for getting into and out of a canyon system videos—available on the Australian Canyoning Association’s YouTube channel—aimed at raising awareness of different canyoning skills and techniques. While the videos aren’t substitutes for professional instruction, they address anchor rigging, canyoning first aid, basic through to advanced ropework skills, and practically everything in between. These videos have been a major impetus for my own ongoing skill development.

Rachel, Craig, Tim and Tom advocate that there’s two main types of canyoning skills required: ‘bush skills’ and ‘technical skills’. Bush skills, in particular, refer to the ability to navigate both on and off track (and not just using your phone; what will you do if it drowns because of leaky ‘waterproof’ bags or if its battery dies while you’re in the middle of nowhere?), and to find passes through clifflines. General bushwalking experience here is highly beneficial. Similarly, outdoor skills like scrambling, downclimbing and partner assisting are invaluable for navigating tricky sections within canyons as well as exiting them; downclimbing and partner assisting can be used to avoid optional abseils, improving efficiency and sustainability by negating the need for anchor materials. (And vice versa: These skills, if gained via canyoning, are highly applicable to broader outdoor settings.)

In contrast, technical skills include, but aren’t limited to, anchor building, abseiling, ascending, rescuing, making sound judgements, and communicating effectively, whether that’s using hand, whistle, or voice signals; these look different for canyons with low water flows versus those with high flows. In the context of remote canyoning, Rachel says tech skills can be subtle; things like not committing yourself beyond your means—for example, checking there’s a suitable option for the next anchor before pulling your ropes, or that the next section is even passable—and being able to construct creative anchor solutions while leaving no trace (the valuable skill we were sadly lacking).

Craig maintains that having these various skills practised and refined so they’re “second-nature”—meaning you don’t have to stop and actively think about them while possibly making mistakes in the process—is critical to avoiding (or, at worst, escaping) an emergency: “You might think you know how to do something, but if you haven’t practised it, that doesn’t mean you can do it. You need to first practise it in a safe environment. And keep that training up.” (Unfortunately for Craig, he found this out the hard way; when he needed to prusik back up their rope in an emergency, it was harder and slower than he would’ve liked.) Further, being equipped with an array of skills, and knowing when and why they’re applicable, is the key to problem solving. “Have a range of tools in your toolbox,” Tim suggests, “that can allow you to deal with different situations depending on your group, the style of canyon, and where you are.”

But our conversation about personal safety, to this point, may have glossed over an important piece in the puzzle of canyoning dangers. Tim’s spent a significant time analysing causes of canyoning-related incidents and fatalities in the Blue Mountains, and his resounding advice is: “Start early. Keep your group small. Move efficiently.” He says that most accidents come from large, inexperienced groups taking too long to get through a canyon and then—cold, fatigued, and with the pressure of getting out before dark—making associated poor judgements. All of which can be minimised, if not entirely mitigated, with good planning and preparation.

I’M LEFT PONDERING SOME QUESTIONS. Firstly, with all this chat about canyoning skills, what if you feel you don’t have enough, or the right, canyoning skills? Does that mean you shouldn’t go canyoning? Not necessarily. It’s generally recommended that at least one, preferably two, people in a group have the requisite knowledge and skills to safely navigate a canyon’s challenges, including emergencies. In practical terms, this can mean canyoning with people you know are experienced and skilled. Alternately, join a bushwalking club (they often run canyoning trips, and sometimes skill-development days too), or consider professional instruction (some guiding companies run skill building trips rather than simply walking you through a canyon), and for the old-timers among us, you can read up on these skills in dedicated canyoning guidebooks and manuals (which can generally be found online too).

Secondly, is having diverse canyoning ethics a good thing, or should we be trying to make canyoning the same in all areas?

Rachel stresses that, just like with rock climbing, this diversity should be respected and preserved; she says that canyoners, including those in Australia, can sometimes try to replicate approaches used in other contexts even though they may not be considered geographically appropriate or necessary; in doing so, the same much-loved canyoning diversity becomes threatened.

Thirdly, what’s the most important thing here? I’d argue it’s mindset. Tim summed it up perfectly when he said the most useful attributes for becoming an ethical, skilled canyoner are to have humility, a critical outlook, and a ready-to-learn mentality: “Canyoning is a never-ending apprenticeship … The best canyoners, who’ve been doing stuff for decades, are still learning new techniques, they’re still thinking about what they’re doing, they’re still watching other people, they’re still going: “How can I do this better?””

And, lastly, why? Why should we want to be ethical canyoners? Craig stressed that, “You’re trying to look after the environment, you’re not trying to ruin it. The reason we go out to these places is because they’re wild and beautiful and you wouldn’t want to ruin that for the next person.” Similarly, Tim, a father of five, said, “Our kids and grandkids and people in a thousand years’ time should be able to go into these places and have the same feeling of awe and wonder at how beautiful they are.”

So, what is it that you don’t know? W

CONTRIBUTOR: Educator, photographer and outdoor enthusiast Ryan Hansen relishes any opportunity to get in a canyon, even if it means kissing a few snakes and battling extreme chafe.