Grose River Packrafting - Faulconbridge pt to Yarramundi

[jeremy089786]

Hello everyone,

Below is a quick report from a trip on the Grose a couple of weeks ago. Pics can be found at: http://adventuresandtinkerings.blogspot ... -095m.html

"Participants: Jeff, Kelvin, Simone, Sam, Grant, Steven

A couple of weekends back I had the chance to paddle the Grose River with the Willow Warriors. The Willow Warriors are a group I had heard about via the paddlesphere who do great work combating willows and other noxious weeds found along river banks while having a great time floating some of my favourite runs. From what I had read this river was a pretty serious undertaking, considered a class IV endeavour for kayakers hardy enough to drag their heavy boats down the steep walls of the Devil’s Wilderness. Luckily for us the rafts were a breeze to hike in and excelled in the shallow steep rapids – making the trip incredibly pleasant.

To access the river one needs to walk 10km or so passed the locked gate at Grose Rd and then down the track just before Faulconbridge point. From the put in, there were a couple of nice little grade 2-3 technical rapids, which saw the group honing their skills for the bigger stuff later down the line. One particular rapid about half an hour was particularly memorable and consisted of a great little boulder garden finishing with a little boof.

A couple of rapids and an assortment of swims later we pulled up to Springwood Ck for lunch in the delightful mid-day sun. Here I became schooled in some of the many willows and other pests that choke many rivers. It really made me appreciate how much hard work often goes into making the vegetation in our natural places the way they are… I never knew!

Setting off with food in our belly we then ran some harder sections starting with a scrape through some trees and a really great little drop one of the team swam through and coped a bit of a hit in. After a couple more rapids we were greeted by two of the best in the river, one was about a 2m drop with a great little pillow of water at the bottom, and the next was a great little bend against a rock. To top it off all there was a friendly little play wave just before the flat water started a little before Mahons creek. After the rapids, there was still some nice moving water until the power lines crossed at straight creek. Following the power lines, the paddling and scenery deteriorated dramatically with the increasing suburbanisation, making the final couple of km’s to the pull out at Yarramundi a bit of a slog.

At this water level, the river was really quite friendly for packrafts. While you could definitely come into serious trouble in some of the bigger rapids, on the whole it wasn't too pushy and didn't feel as unsafe as I was expecting (in my silly full face helmet!). Also, at this level I was incredibly happy to be in a raft rather than a creek boat, as they were much better suited to the often shallow scrapey rapids. At higher levels however the river is said to be much pushier and far more dangerous, with plenty of nasty sieves - and above 1.2m creek boats/ modified packrafts would be better suited.

Thanks again to the Willow Warriors for having me along and thanks to Jeff for the photos and Steven for video editing!"

[AJW Canyon2011]

It sounds like you had quite an adventurous trip Jeremy.

I've recently did a very short rafting trip about 2 weeks ago on the grose river with SUBW we came down from the cabbage tree creek fire trail and walked down the dry watercourse to our launching point launching our various inflatable boats and small pool toys that looked somewhat out of place in that setting. We paddled about 1km downstream to the old fire trail that zig zags it's way back up the top. I managed to get through ok in a hyro force rx-3000 kmart raft just a fancy name for a cheap raft but it managed to handle reasonably well going through some grade 2-3 rapids. I did question the logic of some of the others with the types of inflatables they intended to use on the trip but we all made it down safely portaging around the rapids we considered unsafe to negotiate. In the end my budget raft did suffer a small puncture to the floor but I think that was just a result of me dragging it along some rocks with my pack inside.

Also a job well done to the Willow Warriors as I don't remember seeing many exotic weeds on the trip

[jeremy089786]

Hi AJW,

That would be a nice little afternoon trip, and as I remember there are a couple of good rapids around that section. What was the water level on that trip?

Most of the trips I am on have >80% explorer 200's/ rx-300 (don't they sound tech ha!). It is so hard to get people to commit to a real boat rather than camping/ climbing gear/ mountainbike etc, especially money poor uni crews. If only one day we could get a stockpile of shared boats!

[AJW Canyon2011]

The trip leader did mention that the water level was up more higher than the previous time he did the trip because of the previous rain. I'm not too sure of the water height on the grose river I do the remember the rapids being quite intense so I believe the water levels would of been up more higher than usual and the previous time I did a bushwalk down to the grose river from grose vale the water level wasn't high at all. Another group of SUBW members did a multi day packrafting trip and mentioned the flood gauge at upper colo was reading at 1.85m the same weekend.

They had proper Micro Rafting Systems packrafts though and knew what they were doing although two of them had cheap rafts and the lesser of the two finished the trip half covered with tape from the punctures it sustained.
Yes it would be good to get some decent rafts but the cost is something to be considered depending how often you intend to use them. It seems that the more technical the name of the raft the less capable it is lol.