[SUBW-A] Trip Report: 9th May exploring narrowneck

[jbev1596@mail.usyd.edu.au]

The initial plan was to get to splendour rock in the wild dogs via cattle
dog ridge. Cityrail trackwork + the cancellation of buses meant it took
Nazih nearly three hours to get from parramatta to katoomba....

So pete, nazih, and I headed off to narrowneck, to explore redledge pass &
rennie's tunnel. We left the golden stairs carpark & headed into a gully
at the top of first hill. Some fun scrambling and bush bashing took
us around to an exposed overhang which led  to the rockclimbers path under
the western side of the plateau.

Nazih pulled out his groovy miniature digicam, not bigger than 2
matchboxes....I'd left mine back at the car. So we still got some nice
shots from the neck.

We headed round, passing abseilers near diamond falls & made it to the
point before redledge pass.  However, the traverse of an open cliffface
was looking a bit dodgey. With a few climb downs, we made our own pass to
the valley below.

The spur off the point led us to an overgrown old road which we followed to
Diamond Creek. This led us to the 6 foot track where we made a nice fire
by the creek and tucked into lunch. Pete nodded off after a while. While I
was putting out the fire pete suddenly woke from his dreams to his own
little snowfall...

We turned off the 6 ft trail up to the neck, hoping to find the western end
of rennies tunnel. Instead we found andrew mitchell and he didn't know
where it was either. So we went back and climbed the pumping station
ladders (which have apparently been removed) and headed down the golden
stairs.

The tunnel on the other side is made obvious by the orange creek running
across the track. It was built for the old mines However I think everyone
must have been very short back then..

We muddled along, in a position which reminded me of my days picking
zuchinis in bundaberg. It dropped quite a bit more to about 1.2m? in the
middle. Crawling along, at some stages I was thigh deep in mud. Pete
thought we might need to swim at one point, which would've been something
to savour. However, it was only shin deep. After about half an hour I
spotted light and we crawled out...rather glad to be standing up again!

The exit is actually a couple of hundred metres below the cliffline, and
would be quite hard to spot. In fading light, we scrambled up to the track
and after climbing back up the ladders we headed off.

Nazih grabbed some pizza from rene's, thankfully shared.....mmmm eating
pizza which orange hands....and we took off down the mountain, satisfied
after quite an enjoyable day.

James Bevan

There are some photos of the tunnel at:

http://img44.photobucket.com/albums/v134/jbev1596/
Password: bushstuff

ps Nazih, do you have yours?


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