Some time around 3am on the Sunday of last year's June long weekend several canyoners from the University Newcastle Mountaineering Club heard a cry. It jolted them out of a fitful doze on two narrow, wet ledges deep in a canyon in Kanangra Boyd National Park.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
They dozed off again while about 30 metres below them two mates spun slowly on a climbing rope beside the main pitch of the Carra Beanga waterfall. Steve Rogers, 26, was almost certainly dead. Mark Charles, 24, the leader of the nine-member group, would have been in the grips of hypothermia, his death imminent.
When daylight crept into the canyon Steve Ahern was the first of seven surviving members of the group to leave his ledge. He began to descend the taut rope using prussicking loops - short lengths of rope like stirrups which are slid up or down a climbing rope.
Like the rest of group, who had called out to the two men below long after darkness overtook their attempts to find a safer bivoac site, Ahern would have known their situation was dire.
Ahern's was a technically difficult manouevre on a taut rope over a ledge, even in daylight, but was nothing compared with what he faced when he got a clear view. His mates were hanging, lifeless, clearly blue with cold.
Strangely, they too were attached to the rope by prussicking loops. He cut the loops and they fell about a metre onto a much bigger ledge. Coils of the long double rope (joined with a knot) set the night before were bunched on the tiny ledge.
His grief at discovering his mates' fate is palpable even in the precise lines of his police statement. But it is the recollections of Daniel Weekes, 22, a relatively inexperienced canyoner, which reveal how a fatal long weekend of `dry' canyoning and caving adventure could yet claim more lives.
Weekes was the third member of the party to descend the rope, which was by now free of the weight of the two dead climbers.
"Andrew (Bish, 32, a research engineer at the university) called `don't look down'. I caught a glimpse of two bodies on the ground about five metres from the bottom of the abseil.
"I got really scared. They looked like they had fallen because they were in a heap. This overwhelmed me, knowing they were really experienced guys. But I knew I had to be strong and hold together for the sake of the others because I knew we could not go back up and we could not stay where we were."
Weekes reached the bottom and went to comfort Ahern.
"He was visibly upset and shivering from the cold. Andrew was giving him warm clothes and rubbing him and put him in a sleeping bag," Weekes later told police.
Weekes was somewhat comforted when he learned the two men had died on the rope, probably from hypothermia, and had not fallen, but the group was now without its leader and another very experienced canyoner and still had many pitches of the cascading Carra Beanga creek to abseil before reaching the junction of the more placid Kanangra Creek. They would not be reported overdue until late Monday night.
They would bivoac again in the canyon Sunday night and complete the last abseils Monday morning before walking out to Kanangra Creek. On Tuesday afternoon a search party from Oberon SES would find the seven as they made their way up to a popular walking track which leads back the Kanangra Walls lookout.
But how had two men with the experience of Charles and Rogers become stuck on the rope? It still puzzles experts like Oberon SES vertical rescue instructor Alan Sheehan. It is known from the police forensic reports that Rogers sustained a blow to the head and that pieces of a torch were found in a pool below the bodies.
Bathurst Coroner John Van Uum knows also from the position of the bodies on the rope when Ahern found them that Charles reached the bottom of the long pitch safely on a separate rope but climbed back up to help Rogers who had descended as far as the ledge on the double rope.
There will be no coronial inquiry because Coroner Van Uum is satisfied as to "the identity, date, place, manner and cause" of their deaths.
The only people who could have told Mr Van Uum exactly how Mr Rogers got into trouble during his abseil, and why Mr Charles was found above him on the rope, both rigged up with prussick loops to begin a climb back up to the group, are dead.
The `Watson' column for the mountaineering club in June 2000 carried a light-hearted listing of what turned out to be a very ambitious program: To celebrate the Queen's birthday we thought we'd visit the delightful Kanangra Boyd National Park. Saturday and Sunday will be an overnight dry canyon with more abseils than you can poke a piton at. On Monday a spot of caving in Tuglow for those who feel OK or another dry canyon. Abseiling experience and decent fitness level required. The grade was listed Medium.
The response to this enticing invitation from Mark Charles was good, perhaps too good. He organised a training night for the eight who responded.
Though allowed under the club' strict accreditation scheme to lead a party of nine, taking that many down a series of perhaps a dozen abseils through a canyon on a short winter day was going to take time. And time and their race against it was to prove their undoing.
On Friday night the party arrived at the Boyd River camping area near the end of the Kanangra Walls Road. According to one statement to the police the party had five advanced canyoners, two intermediate members and two beginners.
Soon after daylight Saturday they sorted through gear - three climbing ropes, helmets, harnesses, abseiling hardware and tents - and divided it between the group. Everyone packed their own food and clothes and everyone had thermal underwear and at least a foil blanket to sleep in. This, too, took time.
By the time one car was left at their exit point, the end of road, and a second was driven back to a locked gate on a fire trail where the walk to the canyon started, it was later than at least one member of the large group would have liked.
The police officer reporting to the coroner, Detective Senior Constable Lance McFawn, put the start of their walk at approximately 10.30am. Individual estimates vary from as early as 8.30am to 10am.
The day grew warmer. They walked in "light clothing", shorts, footy jerseys and sloppy joes along a fire trail then through scrub, eating food as they went. There were two 15-minute breaks reported. During one Andrew Bish pin-pointed their position with a hand-held global positioning system (GPS).
By the time they began to set up for the first abseil it was mid to late afternoon. The survivors' estimates of the time range from 2pm to as late as 4pm. Regardless, it was hours later than local SES volunteers would have begun an attempt on Carra Beanga.
Oberon SES officer Alan Sheehan said he would have camped at the head of the canyon the night before to ensure a descent soon after dawn.
But at the canyon head there was only a brief conversation. The club secretary and veteran of 20-30 canyons Sarah Warner, 23, reported discussing the timing with the other woman in the party, 20-year-old Claire Doherty.
"Right from the start Mark (Charles) had made us aware that we should try to get down the falls before night so we could camp at the bottom rather than on the falls," she said.
No-one had done the canyon before. One woman asked Steve Rogers if he had done the nearby Danea Brook Canyon to which he replied yes. Warner assumed Rogers and Charles knew how long it took get through the steepest pitches of Carra Beanga.
At most they had three hours of daylight and yet they were not planning to abseil at night although all apparently had torches.
Neither was the route down Carra Beanga as dry as they had expected - and dressed for. Guidebooks describe the canyon as "dry" - it is possible to avoid the waterfalls by descending either side of them. The dry route is much easier to pick in daylight but the amount of windblown spray can vary depending on the weather and water volume.
From the outset Charles pressed ahead, setting up a single rope and finding the next belay point, usually the trunk of a tree. The group descended three or four pitches of the canyon before it became quite dark. There was a half moon and at first they descended by moonlight conserving their batteries for setting up at each pitch.
When they reached the two ledges where the seven survivors were to spend the night the condition of some of the party was deteriorating alarmingly.
While Charles made his very last decent on a single rope to test whether the double rope (joined with a knot) would reach the next level area, 20-year-old Jim Ching-Jen Wang, an exchange student from the USA, was showing signs of hypothermia. He was seen lying in the foetal position on one of the ledges shivering uncontrollably. He said he was OK. He was wrapped in a heat reflecting foil blanket.
There was talk of sitting out the night on the two ledges, both no more than a metre wide and three metres long, one about three metres below the other. The rock was wet, lose at the edges and crumbly at their backs. Beside them the creek roared as it fell away into the darkness.
Charles typically pushed on, convinced the group could not sit out a freezing night suspended in space without someone falling to their death.
He tied off the single rope and descended to a safe landing. He then called for the double rope to be set and for the next person to descend. (The single rope would have to be untied before the last person descended the looped double rope otherwise it could not be retrieved.)
Claire Doherty later told police that at this point she was tired and hungry and thought that Rogers was too. He was suffering from flu and was becoming hoarse. He seemed reluctant to go next but when no-one volunteered he hooked on the double rope and, wearing his pack, descended from the top ledge passing Ahern and two others.
The minutes passed. They strained over the noise of the waterfall for the call of "off rope" from Rogers. It never came.
The rope remained taut. They heard the sound of the two men yelling, probably trying to hear each other above the rush of water. Later the only voice they heard was Charles.
The only messages which Coroner John Van Uum said was discernable was "don't come down" and "send single rope down".
The single rope was untied and let down. The tension on the double rope remained. Once when Ahern tried to pull on the rope Weekes said he thought he heard Charles call out not to come down.
In the morning the double rope was still taut and Ahern began a descent which was described by Bish as an act of great courage.
When Ahern cleared the ledge he saw the two men hanging together. They were blue and suspended just above a small ledge. The double rope did not descend to the bottom but was bunched on the ledge just below the bodies.
With the bodies freed from the rope which was their only escape route the remainder of the party descended.
Claire Doherty made hot chocolate for the group on a metho stove. After about 20 minutes they continued on. They were barely half way through the canyon.