40m (unverified)

Public land by the canyon, private land in lower Hunter valley.

Before we knew it was the year of the holiday we decided to get in on the action a little early and splash some cash on a heli to the Hunter valley (head of lake Hawea) for a 3 day explotary canyoning mission.

Protuberance canyon 1st decent (named after the peak at the head of the canyon)

After dropping our gear at the hut we took the heli to above the bush line. The canyon immediately started with a beautiful mini gorge and with many technical jumps and a couple of good abseils

It came out of the gorge and became steep slippery down climbing until we almost gave up untill at around 800m altitude it dropped into another tight beautiful carved out canyon cumilnating in a 40m waterfall to finish where you will need to belay someone out to the ledge.

A small scramble to a tributary of the Hunter leads to a swim and float before a short walk to the hut.

Mr Andrew Humphreys was on official photo duties with his SLR camera so will hopefully be publishing these at some point. National geographic he mentioned.

The canyon is a mix of single 10mm bolts and natural anchors.

First descent by Pete Choate, Kaden Anderson, Derek Steffens, Andrew Humpfreys, Ross Fraser March 2020.