Summer's Day in Winter.

Weekend Report of the 4th of July 1998

It was yet again another trip to the fair mountain range, the Grampians. Instead of going to my new secret crag (it was looking very wet in the southern end of the range) I choose to check out the Summerday Valley at Mt Stapylton. This area is nestled in a secluded valley behind Taipan Wall. The area is very impressive. Cliffs tower around you where ever you walk. This has to be one of the most beautiful areas I have ever been. Guidebooks and other climbers had told me it was an area that was very crowded with bumbly's and absielers so was to be avoided. I arrived at around 1pm (after my delightful 3 hour drive from Melbourne) to find the carpark deserted apart from one car. The weather was superb. I proceeded to the cliff in shorts and a T shirt. It was only about a 5 minute walk to the little valley from the carpark. I have been to this area before with Gareth at the beginning of the year but only climbed on the Wall of Fools which is separate from Summerday Valley.

The main area of climbing is a large fin of rock, much like the breadknife at the Warrumbungles, only shorter and flatter on the top. I was expecting monstrous erosion from the abseilers but instead foundit quite 'wildernessy'. heh heh cool new word. I didn't see any rubbish let alone toilet paper and shit like some crags!. Its a Blue Mountains sandstone like cliff but better rock and lots of jugs, a bit like Muldoon at Arapiles. It has great pockets and occasionally strong crack lines. Its not overall overhung but certainly has sections that feel mighty steep. The maximum height is about 35m.

I warmed up by bouldering the base. Its perfect for this as the ground below is sand. I chose one of the easier lines to start with, a grade 13 about 15m high. It had great pockets and a few reachy moves. It was a good solo warmup. After that I tackled a corner 25m 12, a 35m 15 pocketed face with mega exposure, a hand crack/layback offwidth thing 35m 15 and finally a very scary solo of a 20m 17. I think this is properly my hardest solo so far. The crux was a dicey layback on slick rock about 15m off the deck. After that effort I decided to give soloing a rest.

There was only one other group of climbers in the area and they where on Wall of Fools leading a 23. I couldn't see a top-roping bumbly anywhere!

I decided to go exploring and with my trusty four guidebooks to the area (There are at least 15 guides to various areas of the Grampians). I found Sandanista wall and oggled at David Or Tiger, Contra Arms Pump and assorted other 30+ routes. The rock on this wall was actually fairly crappy looking limestone stuff. It def. wasn't as nice as Taipan. Sandanista, the classic rising traverse grade 23 looked amazing. def. one for my tick list. Davey Jones has soloed this inrecent times. Silly boy.

Around to the right from this wall I found some excellent bouldering. Perfect soft landings and very overhung. The most obvious problem was fairly tricky. It involved a big dyno about 3m off the deck to a sloping hold. I couldn't get it. The Grampians bouldering scene has really exploded. Every little piece of rock now has chalk on it. You could spend weeks exploring the various caves and boulders just around Mt Stapylton.

On the way back I met two guys and one of their sons. They were cool hippie climbers who cranked pretty hard. They had all just done (including their 12 yr old son) a number of 23's and 24's on the walls around Sandanista.

Pitying my lack of a climbing partner they invited me along on Sunday. I camped at Hollow Mountain Campground and ate my standard pasta andrice custard. Yummy!

I awoke the next day to a very overcast day. Crappy Victorian weather.The three guys arrived with another four friends and we contemplated our options. We where going to go to Van Diemans Land. A supposedly awesome sport climbing area behind Taipan. Every route is a classic they said. Anyway it started to rain so we bailed to Taipan Wall to play on Spurt Wall, the poxy little sport crag on Taipans far right. I have been there a few times before and really hated it. The routes are badly bolted, very short (8m high) and has very rough rock. It is the only place to go when it rains though. A fair wind picked up and started blowing onto Spurt Wall and it suddenly got really greasy. No one got more than 2m off the ground as the holds where so slimy with water and human sweat. A very suckful place. We bailed back to the cars and played a big game of Hacky Sack (Californian Games style!).

Most of the guys where really good with lots of tricky moves. I am getting better as I sometimes play it with Sean my flatmate. After severe procrastination we decided to check out some crags. Over the road from Mt Stapylton is Mt Zero, a relatively poxy looking mountain with little amount of vast cliff space. We went to find Sport Crack, an Andy Pollit route out a 8m rood crack with five bolts. We found it in a small red cave. It looked horrid. It was a sideways traverse with a finger crack that face down and no footholds. It looked so uncomfortable. There was no need for bolts at all. The crack would fit bomber cams the whole way along. I wonder why Andy bolted it, it would have been a mission to aid along bolting!

On a more interesting note I found on a ridge above Sport Crack a number of great red roofs with serious new route potential. The most obvious line climbed a vertical face for 7m (very thin) then swung through a giant 8m roof on flakes much like Kachoong (but much harder). It looks awesome!!! An easier variant could come in from the right and climb along a very Kachoong flake at around 23ish. I also found several smaller overhung walls further up that look great. This will def. be my new area of development after Lunar Crag. Its only about a 10min walk from the road along flat cleared land.

The other guys left so I went for a bit of a bike ride along sometrails. I checked out an Aboriginal art site in a cave at the base of Stapylton which was ok but nothing compared to Mt Moffat and Carnarvon Gorge.

I drove back towards Halls Gap along the dirt road which runs parallel to the cliffs. This road goes for about 40km with cliffs and crags dotting the range the whole way. There is so much potential in this area. I stopped at a place called Goltons Gorge and walked up. It is an area much like Auburn Gorge but steeper. There was a small creek flowing and big cliffs on either side. In the wet it was fairly hard to get around as the rocks where covered in moss. I found a greatlooking potential new route about halfway up the gorge (15min walk).It starts up a very steep (45') cave for about 4m then goes straight up a pocketed black face for another 10m. It was very Serpent like. The rock was similar, almost like Shadow Glen on Tibro. No friction but good incuts. It looked really good but the surrounding walls werefairly chossy.

Any way that was my weekend