Marijuana Canyon

It was the middle of winter (literally) which seemed like the perfect time to explore a new canyon!

I had read up on some track notes for Marijuana canyon, which all exited by travelling upstream to the Upper South Bowens canyon exit. The track notes all described travelling up the creek as challenging with large boulders to climb up, plus required a car shuffle.

After some extensive searching on maps, I found an alternative exit that I thought would work better upstream. It was significantly shorter and required no car shuffle – big win!

We set off down the fire trail, turning off into the bush to follow the ridgeline down to the creek and the start of the canyon.

We encountered a few unexpected steep drops offs. Its possible we turned down too soon, and should have kept following the ridge for longer. We found a very steep route that was tricky but looked like it would get us to the creek.

Which meant slippery congo line to slide down the steep hill!

Alas, we made it to the creek and to the first abseil!

The canyon got its name from a marijuana plantation that existed on this creek some time ago. There is still reported evidence along the creek of infrastructure from the plantation, though we didn’t see any ourselves.

Ethan flying down the abseil.

Canyoning attire is so colourful, I love it.

A beautiful purple mushie we spotted in the canyon.

The water was so clear!! It looked like glass.

We do love a chockstone. This is a very beautiful and underrated canyon.

We reach the junction with south bowens creek, had some snacks and got changed out of our wetsuits. From here, I thought we would be able to follow along the side of the creek until we reached our exit gully.

Unfortunately, this short section of South Bowens creek was also canyon terrain, and there were no options to stay dry! With a few VERY long swims. Haydo to the rescue!

Getting your dry clothes wet in the middle of winter is far from ideal. We packed in our bags any jackets or shirts we wanted to try and keep dry, and did what we had to do! It was FREEZING without wetsuits. One of our group who hadn’t canyoned often started showing early signs of hypothermia. The group acted swiftly to warm him up, pulling out any dry clothes we had stashed away and removing his wet clothes. Thankfully, we were on the better side of all the swims, and had reached our exit gully which helped to warm him back up. A good lesson learnt for next time.