The Grand Canyon is easily one of the most well known walks in the Blue Mountains, and for good reason. We have walked the trail more times than we can count and it still wows us every time. Walking through the fern covered towering canyon walls never fails to leave us with a sense of awe.
It’s a beautiful, beautiful place and rock hopping over the creeks, through rainforest gullies is guaranteed to bring a little magic to your day. It makes a big impact for a short trail, and whilst you do have a couple of steep climbs, it will be in the comfortable range for most people.
But I bet you’re wondering what the secret is. Well, for that to be uncovered you need to return to the canyon at night. Yes it is adventurous, and those who dare to explore the canyon under the cover of darkness will be treated to a whole different kind of night sky.
You’ve probably guessed it by now, but at night the Grand Canyon Walk is filled with thousands upon thousands of glow worms. We’re going to share everything you could possibly want to know about the canyon by day, and by night.
The Grand Canyon Walking Track
The stats
Distance: 6.5km circuit
Elevation: 310m
Difficulty: Moderate
The Grand Canyon Walk in the Blue Mountains isn’t that long, but it descends steeply, and then finishes with a hefty hike back up. The trail is in great condition, but has a couple of very short sections which require climbing over a rock or two. We took 2.5 hours to do the entire loop, but you could do it in under 2 hours if you don’t stop every 5 minutes to take photos ;-)
Where to start the trail
The track is a circuit and there are three potential car parks you can use. We’ve parked at all of them, but tend to favour starting at Evans Lookout if space allows. If not, it doesn’t make much difference, at least by day. By night you will want to start at Evans Lookout.
Whichever car park you use, the walk length is the same, unless you have two cars in which case you can cut 1km off. That kilometre is entirely flat though, so it’s not really necessary.
Starting the trail at Evans Lookout
If you’re new to the mountains, Evans Lookout is one of the most beautiful viewpoints in the area, with expansive views of the Grose Valley.
Take a good look because the rest of this walk is not about the panoramic views, but rather the beauty and majesty of the canyon.
Into the canyon
The walk begins to the right of the viewpoint, and heads immediately downhill on a series of well made steps. It used to be a lot rougher, but the track has been heavily upgraded in recent years, making the descent a breeze.
You’ll keep descending deeper into the canyon and after around 750m you’ll start to notice it gets very green. There are so many ferns that we think it rivals even some walks we’ve done in New Zealand, and it gives it a wonderfully lush feel.
The further into the canyon you go, the higher the walls start to feel and it’s well worth remembering to stop often, just to look up.
The descent is relatively long and steep at points, but it’s such a good path that it doesn’t feel difficult.
As well as looking up I’d also recommend looking back.
Sometimes the view is even more dramatic looking back, and you’ll notice the magical little staircase which is so popular on Instagram (you wouldn’t notice how sweet it is when you’re walking down it).
Along the canyon floor
After you’ve been walking for 1.5km you’ll begin traversing the canyon floor, and there are lots of little stepping stone crossings which crisscross over the creek.
A couple of sections have bigger, uneven rocks, but nothing challenging. The sound of the water and the resident birdlife always stands out here, I guess it’s magnified by the canyon walls.
If there has been recent rain, you will also find lots of small waterfalls cascading down the canyon. It all adds to the immense beauty of the place, and if you can walk this track after rain and don’t mind a small amount of mud, we’d recommend it.
The rainforest gullies really come to life after rainfall, and they feel almost impossibly green - you almost feel like you need to turn down the saturation in photos so that it doesn’t look fake!
Just under 2km from Evans Lookout there is the option to make a detour into the part of the canyon usually reserved for abseilers. It’s off track and requires negotiating some slippery sections and debris, but you don’t need any technical skills. Even just venturing 350m off the main track will bring you to an incredible swimming hole beneath imposing canyon walls. You can read more about this experience here.
This should not be attempted during or after heavy rain due to the risk of flash flooding.
If you don’t want to venture into the canyon proper, there are a couple of nice little swimming holes along the next part of the main track, or plunge pools at least. The water is pretty cold year round, but if you’re hiking on a hot day they make for a refreshing dip.
After approximately 500m crossing the canyon floor you will begin the ascent.
The start of the climb
The beginning of the climb is not too bad. There are several sets of staircases, but after 300m it flattens again, and you have quite a nice long easy bit to relax on before the final climb out.
The canyon noticeably drys out and the vegetation changes. You’ll walk along some wide railed ledges which offer some great views down into the narrowest part of the canyon.
There are lots of impressive overhangs on the left too, and if you’re walking in spring and summer you’ll find a sprinkling of wildflowers.
After almost a kilometre of pretty flat trail you’ll start heading gradually uphill again.
There are a few staircases, but also some flat track and very gentle inclines. It feels like bushland, rather than rainforest now, but you return to the rainforest in less than a kilometre.
The final climb out the canyon
You’ll soon enter the wet and wild world of the rainforest gullies again and there’s a waterfall that trickles down the canyon wall where we always fill our water bottles. The water is freezing cold and delicious!
You’ll then pass through a small tunnel in the rock just before you reach Neates Glen and from here you can make a short detour to a secret waterfall.
The secret grotto waterfall at Neates Glen
If you're up for a little more adventure you can head briefly off track to a small canyon waterfall and plunge pool. When you reach the large overhang at Neates Glen, instead of following the signpost up the staircase to your left, head right, along the full length of the overhang (70m).
You will come to a very minor creek crossing, you can mostly keep dry shoes here if you tread carefully - though you can't keep dry the whole way to the waterfall, so I personally prefer just biting the bullet and getting wet feet straight away.
Once you've crossed the creek you are approximately 350m from the waterfall. Most of the way there is a bank on either side of the creek you can walk on, you simply crisscross the water using the path that looks easiest to you.
There are some short sections of creek walking which are unavoidable though and the water is generally above ankle height, so wet boots are a given. Even after heavy rain the water was always below knee height - though don't come this way if the creek is in flood.
There are several impressive overhangs and a few bits of debris to negotiate, but nothing significant, it's very easy overall, especially considering it's off track.
Just before you reach the waterfall there are a couple of cascades and a deeper pool. The deeper pool can be avoided by walking on the rock shelf on either side of it, but watch out as the damp rock can be slippery.
You'll then arrive at a rock platform and the waterfall is a few steps away.
If you're just looking at the falls you can stop here, but if you want to swim, you'll need to walk up the water channel to reach the pool.
The very far left of the rock shelf is banana skin slippery and should be avoided, however, the rock the water passes over is rough and grippy. It's actually very easy to walk up despite how it may look.
The pool is small but very deep and the waterfall is powerful. There aren't any rocks inside the water to lower yourself in, so you simply slide in, which is easy as the water almost reaches the lip of the rock shelf.
It's more of a plunge pool than a swimming spot, but it's gorgeous and the best view of the canyon walls and waterfall is definitely from within the pool. The water is refreshing in summer, rather than overly cold and it’s a stunning spot to cool off.
We visited on the Australia Day weekend and the walking trail above was heaving, yet we had this little secret pool all to ourselves, it was bliss.
When it comes to getting out of the pool, as there are no rocks or ledges to help, I just launched out on my stomach. Highly inelegant, but very effective and easy to do.
To exit the waterfall area, instead of retracing your steps you can climb up the old stone staircase beside the waterfall. The main walking track is 20m above you.
The steps are uneven but still in decent condition. As you near the top there's a bit of dirt track interspersed between the steps and it's a little overgrown and rough. However, when dry it wasn't slippery - though I wouldn't have liked descending the stairs, ascending was easy.
You will pop out on the main Grand Canyon walking track beside a large rock and you're now 400m beyond Neates Glen and head right to continue the circuit.
From Neates Glen to the top
If you chose to skip the sidetrail, then you’ll begin the steeper part of the trail to the top of the canyon. The signpost here says 45 minutes but it isn’t that long in reality, even if you’re feeling unfit and huffing and puffing your way up, as we were on our most recent visit!
Staircases will take you up a particularly wet part of the canyon, the walls drip with moss and yet more ferns.
The wet forest eventually turns dry once more, and you leave the staircases to complete the final ascent on a sloping zigzag trail. After 1.5km of fairly non stop uphill walking you’ll reach the top of the canyon.
Assuming you parked at Evans Lookout you then follow the bush track which runs beside the road back to your car, it’s completely flat and easy.
It’s roughly a kilometre long. When you see the Grand Canyon car park you can walk through it and past the toilet to continue on bush track, otherwise the last part of the walk is on the road.
The Grand Canyon by night: walking through a world of glow worms
I just want to start by saying that if you’re looking for an easy-access glow worm colony, this isn’t it. This is a more adventurous option as you descend deeply into the canyon (and then hike up the steep trail back!). If you’d love to see glow worms, but don’t want to put in so much effort, we’d recommend Horseshoe Falls, Burralow Creek or Birdwood Gully. You can see our comparisons between the various sites in this post.
However - if you’re up for an adventure - the Grand Canyon has more glow worms than any of the other spots we’ve mentioned, and is one of the most spectacular night walks we’ve ever done.
It’s also a totally immersive experience as it’s extremely unlikely there will be anyone else around, both because few people know there are glow worms here, and it’s a steep walk.
Although we’ve walked the canyon many times by day and recognised a lot of spots, it really did feel like a whole new world at night, and was a real thrill.
For me, the feeling of awe at being in the middle of a canyon, surrounded by glow worms at night, with no one else around is a difficult feeling to encapsulate. You just feel alive!
Anyway here’s how to do it for yourself.
The night walk
We walked from Evans Lookout so that’s the route we’ll describe, however we’re fairly certain there would be many glow worms on the Neates Glen side too (we’ve since been back to check and they are on the Neates Glen side, but in lower numbers).
From Evans Lookout take the usual path down into the canyon, you’ll start to see your first glow worms after roughly 700m. They are on both sides of the canyon walls but at first you’ll only spot a few as your eyes start to adjust.
As you go deeper, the colonies become denser and you’ll see them in so many nooks and crannies, and on the underside of overhangs, as well as the canyon walls. The walls are so high and the glow worms go right the way up. We were walking on a clear night, with no moon, and the glow worms literally appeared to run all the way into the stars.
Magical doesn’t even begin to cover it. At points I genuinely couldn’t work out which were glow worms and which were stars!
The best spot for photographing the glow worms
We’d recommend periodically stopping and turning your lights out to truly admire the spectacle. At the 1.4km mark there is a huge number of glow worms all clustered together, running from the bottom to the top of an overhang.
This is the best colony to photograph because you are right beside them. As I sat watching Joe take photos he appeared to be entirely surrounded by them, it’s a memory I’ll keep forever.
The best spot for viewing the glow worms
We continued on a further 300m, past more glow worms, until we stopped just beyond the stepping stones beside the waterfall, at 1.7km. This is the best spot to sit and view the glow worms.
There is a huge dry rock which you can sit on and turn off all light and look on both sides of the canyon walls. I’m not sure what it is about this spot but they appeared to glow bigger and brighter than I have ever seen before (and we’ve been making our way around the Blue Mountains colonies one spot at a time). The rock is the perfect spot to sit and relax, it’s large and dry, whereas up to this point there isn’t really anywhere to sit which isn’t damp.
It’s harder to photograph them here though because you are slightly further away.
The one thing I would add here though, is that the running water magnifies sound on the canyon floor and at points we felt like we could hear people talking, which I’m not going to lie, was a little eerie.
We’re pretty sure there are many, many, more glow worms throughout the wet areas of the Grand Canyon, but we were pretty tired by this point and knew we had the big climb out the canyon to come, so we didn’t go further. We were also so happy with what we’d seen, which were countless thousands by this point!
If you explore the other side of the canyon, we’d love to hear about it!
The climb back out
The climb back out of the canyon is fairly steep and covers 250m elevation in just 1.7km. It’s not difficult in the dark because the terrain is so good, but we were tired by the top! Maybe because we’d just climbed it in the day too.
The stars as we climbed out were also mind blowing, so if you get the chance to do this trip on a clear night, we’d highly recommend it. The amount of stars and shooting stars we saw really was incredible.
Caring for the glow worms
Please protect this colony when you visit.
Please don’t shine light on the glow worms, they don’t like it and will turn their lights out. To find a spot to sit and relax in you can use a torch shone directly at the ground, and then turn it out.
You’ll see so much less if you keep a light on. It takes your eyes at least five minutes to adjust before you start to see the majority of glow worms that are actually there.
Also if you’re keen on getting a photo, bring a tripod which will allow you to capture the glow worms without shining a light on them. None of our photos use any artificial light.
Essential information about the Grand Canyon Track
The best time to walk the track
Currently many of the most well known walks in the Blue Mountains are closed, following the fires and flood damage of early 2020. This means the Grand Canyon Track is more popular than ever before. For this reason if you’re hiking on a weekend, we’d recommend heading there early or late in the day. We walked during summer, and started at 4pm, the canyon was empty and we had plenty of light to get around.
What to bring on the night hike
At night, the canyon was much warmer than the car park so we found ourselves shredding layers. Having said that, just in case, I’d still bring a spare layer. You’ll also want a headtorch, preferably with red light (we recommend this on Amazon). We found that very little light is actually required to do the walk as there’s such a good path. I just used my phone shone at the ground, and Joe had a head torch, both are good to have, and you’ll want a couple of different light sources in case one fails.
I’d also bring plenty of water because the climb back out is quite steep, and if you’re down there a long time like we were, you’ll want to make sure you have enough.
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