eggs wrote:So you have called this Canyon of Defiance?
No, I didn't name the canyon. The only names I have coined are Ribuck Ramp, Meg's Reach and Alexa's Reach, and I'm not emotionally attached to those names so feel free to call them whatever you like.
But Canyon of Defiance is the correct answer. Well done! You worked hard to win that.
Not many bushwalkers visit the Canyon of Defiance because most bushwalkers prefer to be on the south side of the Chewings Range at this point.
I had an ulterior motive for posting this canyon to the game. I have just posted an invitation in the
Find Walking Companions forum for participants on an 8-day trip to Canyon of Defiance in early September:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=29958The Canyon of Defiance was named in 1991 by Frank Rigby, who wrote the book
Bushwalking in the MacDonnell Ranges. He was on a trip with Meg McKone of CMW, who wrote:
"We could look down into the amphitheatre and see the white rocks at the bottom of the creek as it headed into a canyon and disappeared from sight around a huge red bulge in the cliffs, only to reappear before dropping to the plains below. The slopes down into the gorge looked impossibly steep and the step onto the plains might have an impassable drop. As we mused over a possible name, Frank Rigby suggested ‘The Canyon of Defiance’, a tribute to its seemingly impregnable nature."In 1992 Meg McKone found a way into part of the canyon (hence "Meg's Reach"), but the party could not get beyond the Pebble Bowl. She wrote:
"We felt as if we were diving into the bowels of the earth, surrounded by glowing red and gold walls as we followed the canyon round the ‘Big Red Bulge’, straddling pools and wriggling up behind a chock-stone until we reached a bowl full of rounded pebbles beneath an impassable drop. Though the canyon continued above us, we couldn’t climb into it."On subsequent trips, Meg tried to find a way into higher reaches of the canyon from the side and from above, but did not succeed. You can read more about the early exploration of the Canyon of Defiance and Portals Canyon on page 20 here:
https://www.cmw.asn.au/application/file ... ticles.pdfIt was not until last month, 27 years later, that I found Ribuck Ramp which leads into the reach above the Pebble Bowl. I refer to this as Alexa's Reach because Alexandra Bullen was the first to walk to the end of the main chasm of that reach. You can see where we went, and some more photos, at Wikiloc:
https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/c ... s-37899281This was near the end of our trip, and we did not have time to explore much further, which is why I'm planning to return there in September, and inviting others to join me.