About Kalang Falls
Kalang Falls was our waterfalling excuse to go all the way to the Kanangra Walls deep into the southwest side of the famed Blue Mountains.
According to our pre-trip research, we were expecting to see an impressive waterfall at the bottom of a hanging valley carved out by the Kanangra Creek.
However, as you can see from the photo above, it was merely trickling during our November 2006 visit despite a few consecutive days of rain.
Thus, I can’t really say if this was a very seasonal waterfall with a small drainage or if the big drought that affected Australia at the time affected the area to the point that even the recent rains couldn’t revive this waterfall.
Hiking to Kalang Falls
From the Kanangra Walls Lookout area and car park (see directions below), we took a descending track down several steps with a few small sections of friction pitches.
A sign here indicated that it was a walk of about 60 minutes return, and it might have taken us a little bit less time than that (probably because we didn’t linger here too long given the trickling state of the falls).
That said, the trail was interesting in that it really did feel like we were hiking with a sense of vertigo as cliffs and dropoffs were always present.
Perhaps that was why the sign indicated that it was a “rough track” even though Julie and I didn’t have much difficulty with this track at all.
The Search for Kanangra Falls
Apparently, there was a lot more to this waterfall than what we were able to see from the official track.
We saw from the literature that some people come here to abseil (rappel) into parts not accessible by trail.
Julie and I came out here looking for the Kanangra Falls (thinking the Kalang Falls was a bonus waterfall), but we were never really able to find it.
So, I’d imagine that perhaps the abseilers would be able to reach that waterfall given how I was only able to find photos of it from abseilers as opposed to hikers.
Even though it might have seemed like a wasted effort to come all the way out this way from Sydney to see a waterfall that wasn’t flowing too well, the trip did yield nice panoramas of the Kanangra Walls as well as a bonus side trip to the Jenolan Caves (including some natural arches) along drive up here.
Authorities
Kalang Falls resides in the Kanangra-Boyd National Park near Jenolan Caves in New South Wales. It is administered by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, visit their website.
Getting here requires a very long out-and-back day tour from the Blue Mountains area passing by the Jenolan Caves. Starting from Sydney, we took one of several motorways going west into the Blue Mountains. Once we were in the outskirts of Sydney, we continued going west on the M4, which then became the A32. It took us a couple of hours drive to go at least 100km towards Wentworth Falls town or Katoomba (not much further to the west). Continuing west on the A32 (Great Western Hwy), we then went past Blackheath and towards Lithgow until reaching the Jenolan Caves Road to the left (28km or 30 minnutes drive west of Katoomba) before the town of Hartley.
Then, we followed the Jenolan Caves Road, which eventually passed through the Jenolan Caves complex after (45km). Another 2.5km after passing through a long cave or natural arch (not sure how you’d classify that), we then turned left onto Kanangra Road. We followed the unsealed Kanangra Road for another 27km towards its end near the Kanangra Walls Lookout. If we were driving non-stop from Sydney to this lookout, the drive would be 209km or nearly 4 hours without stopping.
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