Leap before you look

By Bobbi-Jo // 25 February 2010 // Comments: 2 // Related Categories: Best Backpacker Job, sydney, Things to do

Here’s the wonderful thing (well, one of the many wonderful things) about traveling: it can get you to do things you never would have done were it not for the pure intoxication of being in an exotic and beautiful place.

Because really, if you’re going to trek all the way out to the Blue Mountains, you better believe you’re going to jump off, climb up, or abseil down something.

Yesterday I made the 2 hour trip from Center Sydney up to the mountains to do just that. Accompanied by THE WORD’s wonderful intern Janna, I was pretty sure I had no idea what I was in for. For the uninitiated, abseiling is the same thing as rappelling. What’s rappelling? A momentary lapse of sanity in which you find a really big rock, attach some ropes to it, and climb down.

Janna and I arrived at the Blue Mountains Adventure Company bright eyed and bushy tailed at 8:30am to meet tour guide Shannon. After linking up with the two other people in our group, we were off for some introductory abseils to get us comfortable with the equipment and learn the basics.

Basic #1: Don’t be a weenie.

Even though the initial abseil is only 5m, if you’ve never done any sort of rock climbing before it’s a little….strange to walk yourself backwards off of a ledge and scoot your way down. The next two abseils graduated in height until we were up to about 25m and lowering ourselves down cliffs which - to me - were a bottomless abyss that I was one mistake away from tumbling into, never to be seen again.

Cue dramatic music.

And then stop the music because, honestly? It was really fun. I will freely admit that the whole thing made me a little nervous, but the views were absolutely spectacular and we had an amazing guide in Shannon so we were fully prepared for each abseil and making sure we got in and out of the equipment safely.

After the introductory phase of the day, we had a picnic lunch (hummus never tastes as good as when you feel as though you’ve just conquered something huge) and were off to the second part of the day: canyoning and abseiling down a waterfall.

A pounding, slippery, real-life, honest to god waterfall. But more on that later.

Guys. I’m going to go ahead and make the analogy that canyoning is the big kid version of fun house ball pits. You know the ones? There are lots of brightly colored balls and slides and you can jump off things and into things and play and have a blast? Well, if you’re the outdoorsy type (and even if you’re not - Exhibit A: moi) canyoning is the same deal. You can slide down the rocks, wade or swim through the pools of water, waterjump (where you jump off of the higher rocks into the pools below) and as an added bonus you get to take in the breathtaking views of canyons that took millions of years to form.
After about 30-45 minutes of working our way through the canyon, we reached the highlight of the day: the waterfall.

I can’t tell you too much about what it looked like from the top because I was just trying - at all costs - not to look down. I’m a firm believer that gravity should be respected at all times because if we don’t, well, then we could go SPLAT. But the only way off the waterfall was down it, so I took a deep breath, remembered where I was (um, Australia, gorgeous mountains, A WATERFALL) and went for it.

And then about half way down, in the most ceremoniously ungraceful way, flipped out, got scared, and sat on a ledge with water pounding down on me and only half sure of which way was up. But here’s where great tour guides and awesome tour partners come in. Between Shannon at the top of the fall reassuringly pointing me in the correct direction, and Heidi, a Web developer visiting from Illinois with tons of nature-girl experience, at the bottom yelling up that I was doing OK, I stood up, leaned back, and made my way the rest of the way down.

And oh my gosh was that amazing. It was only when I got to the bottom that it hit me what I had just done. It’s pretty spectacular just looking at the waterfall, let alone climbing down it. I think the trip pushed all four of us (Janna, myself, Heidi and her travel  partner Jessica) in different ways. I for one am now over my fears of heights, bodies of water where you can’t see through to the bottom, and touching green slimy rocks. How’s that for jumping right in, Australia? I couldn’t have hoped for a better experience as my first official activity on this trip. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

*And a very special thank you goes to Blue Mountains Adventure Company for putting on such a fantastic day and especially to our guide Shannon for recognizing when I was scared out of my pants, and instead of coddling that fear, managed it with a little, “You got this.” 

**Images in this post via Heidi.

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