Vanishing Falls
A packraft descent to the falls that swallow a river, January 2010.
Vanishing Falls sits on the Salisbury River in the far southwest, where the river drops and then simply disappears — swallowed underground below the falls. Very few people have stood at its lip; fewer still have arrived by water.
We came in by packraft, descending the river system toward the falls with the boats carrying what our backs could not. The full account is being rewritten for this page from the original trip record.
The descent was also filmed. Vanishing Falls lies in the heart of the wilderness zone north of Precipitous Bluff, ringed by some of the thickest scrub in Tasmania; in 2010 John Mclaine and I carried packrafts over the southern ranges and followed the Salisbury River down to the falls. "Vanishing Falls by Packraft" is the film of that journey — it plays on this page, below, and the full written report will join it here.
Photographs from the trip are being re-scanned and re-exported from the originals and will join this page as they land.