Being close to Sydney, deep, dark and spectacular Claustral is one of the most popular canyons in the Blue Mountains. On weekends through out the summer it attracks hoards of adventures with horror stories of having to line up for ages just to get on the abseils. Over the last couple of years it has become so popular that it even gets crowded on weekdays.

This popularity is the main reason we've put off doing the trip. After all the last thing you want to see on an adventurous canyon trip is mobs of tourists. The tales of it's splendour, however, finally got the better of us and we had to have a look for ourselves.

Unable to organise a less hectic weekday trip we decided to take the alternative way in through Ranon canyon, getting a bit more canyon for our day and bypassing the possible line ups at the normal abseils.

If we thought that we'd be the only group with that plan we were saddly mistaken. Coming across two other groups heading down Ranon the same time as us and a few more once we got into Claustral itself.

That said the groups we come across were all friendly and good humoured. So we had a great time, met a few characters and even learnt a thing or two along the way.
So here's our virtual tour of
Ranon and Claustral Canyons
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