Miraculously, the streak of good weather sounded like it would hold for another couple days so I was really keen to check out Blue Creek on the north side of the Mt Owen massif. This canyon has one of the rare distinctions of being one of New Zealand's few dry slot canyons. The canyon is carved in marble. In normal flow the creek disappears underground above the canyon and emerges at Blue Creek Resurgence just below. This resurgence drains a significant portion of the Mt Owen area (>20 km2), so when it rains and pours and the water becomes too much for the cave system to handle, it floods spectacularly down Blue Creek canyon. Fresh logs and old bolts (now inaccessibly high up the walls of the canyon) are testament to the punctuated activity of the canyon. The lack of water (apart from two pools) means the canyon can be comfortably done without a wetsuit. It also means the smooth, algae-coated, water-sculpted rocks are incredibly slippery!
We found the access trail easily enough thanks to some good directions and made it to the start of the canyon in good time. Certainly one of the shorter approaches for a NZ canyon! The fun began right away. The canyon has lots of downclimbing and depending on skill and confidence many things some would consider a rappel can be downclimbed with care. Nevertheless the rocks were slippery so we treaded with care. I knew the canyon's two longest abseils were 15m and 18m (and a dozen of about 10m or less) so rather than take my longest rope I opted to take my 22m rope and get creative with my pull cord. With care I was able to tie on webbing as a pull cord (photo above). It worked like a charm but the webbing was much more prone to tangling and knotting than rope so I certainly wouldn't want to use it if water was around.
Almost from start to finish the canyon is a true slot. We passed through a beautiful section with particularly sculpted dry waterfalls and fluted walls. The walls were greater than 20-40m high for much of the length. Rather than just a dull black, the canyon walls were lined with ferns, moss and other foliage which transmitted light and gave the canyon a green glow.
Many of the abseils had false floors. This happens when sediment and other debris gets trapped behind wedged logs or rocks and builds up the floor of the canyon to make a drop. We saw several places where out of reach bolts indicated places where false floors had collapsed. Many of the old bolts we used led to awkward abseils. For a change of roles I let Sara rig several of the drops.
When we got to the first waist deep pool at the base of a drop I heroically tried to give Sara a guided abseil to avoid the pool (I was partially successful). I gave her a piggyback ride across the second waist deep pool to spare her the dead creature-brewed freezing water. Sara was getting cold, and admittedly I was too after the wades, so we carried on at a steady pace.
Something like 16 abseils later we exited the canyon and scrambled down past Blue Creek Resurgence. From here we had a cruisy walk back on a good quality track which past several interesting mining relicts. Really glad I got to see this canyon.
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