Progression through a canyon often requires the descent, ascent or traverse of a geographic feature requiring abseiling, rock climbing or protecting traverses. These features are referred to as a canyon problem.

We’ve put together a checklist to give you some idea of the technical skills required to negotiate these problems safely.

While the majority of canyons in Australia only require relatively basic abseiling skills, as your experience grows you may choose to chase harder more technical canyons requiring more advanced techniques.

Advanced technical canyons will combine a range skills and techniques from numerous disciplines including abseiling, caving, rock climbing, vertical rescue and swift water.

To help you understand where you might sit within the spectrum of expertise we’ve broken down the skills, techniques and knowledge into the following levels:

• SP = Safe Participant - has the requisite skills and knowledge to participate in technical canyoning safely but is dependant on others for rigging, rescue and complex problems.

• TP(I) = Trained Participant (Intermediate) - ability to participant as an independent team member, rig non-complex problems, perform self rescue and participate in the rescue of others.

• TP(A) = Trained Participant (Advanced) - rig complex problems (e.g hanging anchors, redirects, traverses etc), respond to rescue scenarios requiring haul systems.

• E/G = Expert/Guide - Competence in basically everything and be responsible for less skilled and dependant participants (especially in rescue scenarios).

If you predominately canyon in the Blue Mountains area you will generally only need the skills listed towards the Trained Participant (Intermediate) level (dependant on what canyon you are doing) with some overlap into Trained Participant (Advanced). If you’re playing in Northern NSW, Victoria and some Kanangra canyons in high flow you will start to need more of the skills listed under Trained Participant (Advanced) and above.

Note: This checklist is not comprehensive and only addresses technical canyoning skills, and does not cover the range of other skills required to go canyoning e.g. navigation, nutrition, first aid, party management etc. Even within the scope of technical canyoning skills this check list should not be considered a comprehensive guide. The division of skills into levels is not rigid and depending on your context you will be required to acquire and use skills and knowledge from anywhere on the spectrum. As always, do your research and make sure you have the necessary knowledge, skills and equipment to canyon safely and responsibly.

Gear

Anchors