The Silver Screen

Weekend of the 19th December 1998

Climbers

Neil Monteith

Poul Christofferson

My work had its Christmas party on Friday so instead of the normal drive I awoke instead on the floor of work at 4am Saturday morning very hungover. Not remembering much from the night before I retired home to get some proper sleep. Settling in at 6am I dozed for an hour or so until I was suddenly rudely awoken my the doorbell. Who the hell would be ringing at 7am? I had told all my climbing friends that Saturday would be a non climbing write off day so it couldn't be one of them. My flatmate answered the door and discovered it was Poul! He was dying to go climbing and it took about twenty minutes of serious negations to convince him that I wasn't going climbing right then and there. We agreed to drive to the Gramps that night and climb Sunday. I caught up with a few more hours of sleep, did some very fast Xmas shopping and we left for the Gramps with Poul's flatmate.

We decided we had two options depending on the weather. Our first preference was Mt Fox and our rain backup plan was the Gallery. We drove through Hall's Gap and down the hill on the other side in light rain. By the time we go to the Bauandik campsite it had cleared slightly and we quickly set up camp and cooked dinner. The possums were not nearly as bad as the last time I was there. In January Gareth and I had to throw our stove and anything else portable at them just so we had enough peace to eat dinner. At least six possums attacked us at one time, they would creep up behind you and leap at your plate of food. We eventually just gave up and hid in our tents. This time it was a much more civilised affair with only two possums trying to muscle in on our food.

During the night it poured down outside. The campsite turned into swamp land and we all got quite wet. It was a sorry sight the next morning as we all struggled out of our tents and started hanging our sleeping gear in any tree we could find. The clouds above still looked really shitty but we took the risk and decided to go to Mt fox. I think Poul was scared off by my stories of the Gallery's mega roof fests!.

The walk up was described in the guidebook as 25minute steep single track. We found this to be quite far off the mark. Half the walk was along a wide flat fire road and the second half was only a short hike up a hill. All up we arrived at the cliff in under 15mins of walking. The whole Victoria Ranges is an amazing looking area. Beautiful orange buttress's jut out all over the range. The guidebook lists three star classics all along the range, many of them hard sport routes. Mt Fox itself is a fine piece of cliff, very obvious to spot from the road. The centre is the famous silver screen of Baxter's 'Twentieth Century Fox' and on either side are several other classics. The second best line which to me look better than TCF was Pretty Foxy (25). It climbs a fantastic thin orange corner, traverses along a break then fires straight up a very blank piece of slab. Most of the routes on the wall are full 50m rope stretching single pitches. The weather look ok so Poul decided to risk it and start climbing.

He decided to do Twentieth Century Fox first. The beginning overhung hand crack was hard going. He placed four or five cams and almost fell out at one stage. From a small stance above the handcrack the fantastic grey slab arches above. He climbed the rest of the pitch in fantastic style, placing several small wires and clipping lots of dodgy bolts. He climbed out of sight about forty metres up. I kept paying the rope out until I was all out. Luckily Poul had just pulled over the top when the last of the rope slipped through my stitch plate. It was the closest 50m pitch I have ever done! The problem was that he then needed rope to setup his belay. I watched with horror as the rope begun to be pulled up. I managed to tie another rope to the end the lead rope and clip into the second rope. I then had to solo up the hard hand crack for about 8m until Poul could finally clip me in. The moves were excellent and reminded my of Black Ian's Rocks. When I was finally on belay I seconded the rest of the route. The slab itself is very thin in places and the climbing is quite gymnastic involving a few heel hook sideways traverses. Thank god for all that traverse training at K-Point. The crux bolt was one of the worst I have seen anywhere. It was a 1970's rivet, which is really a soft blob of metal with a hanger attached. I wouldn't have even trusted my body weight on the thing let alone a fall! At least there were plenty more bolts on either side of it. We did a double rope rap to get back to the base using my dodgy cut rope from Ozy. It is always scary going past the 'point of no return' sheath cut in a rope. The hole had rapidly got worse so we decided to fully retire my rope.

No, this is not my photo. It is a Glen Tempest shot of some girl doing Twentieth Century Fox.

After some food I jumped on a 22 Mike Law route which crosses over Twentieth Century Fox the other way. The start was an excellent gritstone like rounded arete which involved lots of side pulls and slaps on very frictional rock. From a nice rest it then climbs TCF for eight metres then heads off right up a thin and technical face. I loved the route, it had some scary runout sections, but the rock was so perfect I didn't care. I got the onsight so was very pleased. The belay consisted of two very dubious Mike Law bolts. One was a dodgy rivit and the other was a carrot poking out by at least two inches. I was lucky to find some natural gear in a crack nearby to back up this bolting atrocity.

Poul led the next pitch, grade 19, up a bold and stunning slab. I almost froze to death on the hanging belay as the wind picked up dropping the temp to the low 10's. It felt like Defender at Buffalo all over again. I seconded finding the crux move really tricky and thin. The two bolts on the crux were supposedly retro bolts so it would have been mega scary in the early days. I would give this route at least two stars and maybe three if it was at any other cliff in Australia.

I then jumped on a small overhung grade 23 sport route left of the main Mt Fox wall and got it clean on my second go. It was a bit of a one move wonder but what a move! It was classic Taipan stemming craziness whilst crimping down hard. I loved it but Poul failed miserably. It was def. a power mutant climb. After that Poul did one of the stupidest climbs ever when he climbed a wet mossy arete then finished up a super overbolted face that had four bolts in 10 metres and was about grade 12. I seconded it in bare feet and pronounced it 'trash'.

That was it.