Winter Arrives in Grampains

Weekend Report of the 20th of March 1999

Poul left the state for a one month job in Western Australia whilst Thomas continued his travels and moved to New Zealand. This meant it was only Nick and I who ventured forth this weekend. With a newly delivered box of cheap Queensland bolts courtesy of Lee Skidmore we were prepared for a new routing weekend. Nick gained some inside information about a cliff called the Rockwall which is located near Centurion. Apparently it had quite a bit of steep bolted potential on the left wall of the main cliff.

We camped at our favourite wallaby site at Troopers Creek. As expected the roos were out first thing and proceeded to hassle for food. The cutest little baby roo was the tamest. It was only half the size of the others, all fluffy, and even let you pick it up (sort of).

The Rockwall cliff is hidden inside a funny commercial campground called Roses Gap. It is a very strange place, a bit like a school camp, with ropes courses, huts and assorted caged animals. We managed to sneak in without paying the entrance fee and drive right up to the base of the cliff. The guide reckoned it was a fifteen minute walk, but Nick and I could do it in under thirty seconds! The area surrounding the cliff had been burnt in the bush fires a few months ago. As you hike up to the crag you step in thick ash and charcoal, the whole surrounding area is very reminsant of a post nuclear holocaust. The major line on the smallish crag is written up as a three star classic called 'Horseman of the Apocalypse' 20. The climb was indeed impressive from the ground. It was a gigantic bottomless open book corner about fifty metres high and slightly overhung at the start. The actual climb dodged the obvious continuation of the line at the top and climbed a grade 14 flake on the left wall. Nick decided to do the obvious corner so rapped down to clean it.

As he was doing this I checked out the orange overhung wall left of Horseman. Most of it looked loose and uninviting but two lines stood out. The first was a well chalked steep intermittent crack which was not in the guide. It looked about 22. To the right of this a scooped overhung wall looked possible. Being the overhung crank fiend that I am I chose to check out the scoop route. The absiel down was very scary, a lot of the top rock was very loose and many potential fridge size blocks lurked on every ledge. I eventually managed to aid under a small roof on some RP's and crappy slings. The right side of the scoop was a gigantic flake which was very fragile. Several kicks later the flake was gone and I could continue aiding down safely. The left side of the scoop looked good and had many small pockets. I hung off a dodgy small wire in a pocket and hand drilled one of my new 12mm Flush Head Dynabolts. These bolts are considerably bigger than the truebolts I have been placing recently. So, with a lot of huff and puff I got the hole drilled and whacked the bolt home. I could now set up a toprope off the single bolt under the roof and backed up with my abseil rope. It was true aid climbing messy rope work.

As I was doing this Nick had absieled down another potential line on the far left of the wall and was proceeding to lob huge car seat size boulders from the top of the cliff. He eventually got really scared of the looseness and bailed off it. From the ground the climb looked really good but alas it wasn't to be.

I toproped my newly arranged climb but found the middle section extremely loose. The climbing was very continues at about grade 22 and had some great moves but the rock was generally very poor. Nick had a go on toprope and we both agreed it wouldn't be worth wasting the seven bolts required to rig the climb. I jugged up to the bolt, unscrewed the hanger and back aided up the wall above. It was beginning to get late so we quickly rapped back down and I set up a hanging belay below the newly cleaned upper corner of Horseman. Nick lead the new bit of the corner easily at about grade 17 but stalled near the top on the supposed grade 14 exit corner. When we had rapped down I had noticed this particular corner looked very technical. After placing some low gear and crimping on a small edge on the right wall Nick eventually got positioned in the corner. Some further grunting layback moves got him to the top. When I seconded these moves I also found them very hard. Proberly closer to grade 21 - the biggest sandbag in the Grampians? Proberly!

The day was getting on so we dashed over to the far right of the crag to prep a new route I had checked out earlier. The rap in was fairly dodgy as the only trees at the top of the cliff were all burnt out. I eventually found a really big burnt stump and slung that - a true mountaineering anchor. Luckily the top of the cliff was very slabby so had heaps of friction on the rope so the dead tree wasn't really weighted. The buttress the potential line is on is small orange wall, about 30m high and about the same in width. A few poxy climbs have been done on it and one superb looking grade 20. The guide says the 20 hasn't had a free ascent so it will be another climb I will have to do. On the rap down my potential line I quickly sussed out the routes direction. It climbs a very blank wall on thin crimpers and a small crack for about fifteen metres then joins up with the 20 at a fantastic small finger crack corner. I quickly placed a bolt at the start and dismantled the absiel rope. The first bolt is a stick clip as a very hard move is about a metre off the deck and the fall would be onto a lot of stacked boulders. Nick used his bush sense to construct a stick clip without any tape to tie the biner onto the stick. The first moves were very hard. A line of small crimpers leads left to a stance. From this position you have to step up onto a crap little edge and lunge with your left hand to a good jug. I tried this move several times, touching the jug, but never holding it. It was the sort of move that seems to get worse every time you try it. Nick also had a go but couldn't stick it. We put our lacklustre effort down to having worked hard bolting, jugging and cleaning all day. I had another go but eventually just pulled up on the draw and grabbed the jug. The next moves were again difficult, I layawayed on a small edge and got to the base of the very small crack. I slipped in a Rock #4 but of course it was too small and got jammed. In a very desperate stance and with the bolt at my feet I battled to get the wire back out. The wire held my weight but was only attached by the smallest of edges. There was no other natural pro in sight so after a drawn out battle and a lot of huffing and puffing I eventually freed the wire and fell back onto the bolt below. It was practically dark by now so we cut our losses and bailed for the day leaving the draw in place. The climb felt really hard, perhaps grade 25.

We awoke the next morning to the sound of serius rain. Just our luck, we had been discussing the fact that we had never been rained out on any of our climbing trips in the last eight months. I zipped open the tent fly to survey the scene. The ground was practically a small lake, a few centimetres deep in water. The Kangaroos had attacked our food and stove the during the night and left rubbish strewn all over the muddy ground. It was not a pretty sight. We hid in the tent until restlessness finally set in and we dashed out to the car. We had flattened the cars battery the night before by leaving the lights on and the stereo going but luck was with us and the car started first go. After a careful map scoping session we decided to check out a cliff called Woomera which is on the mountain range above Lunar Crag. A road runs along the top of the range but is only accessible from the south of the range, and we were at the far north. Instead of a huge roundabout detour we decided to try a marked dirt road which would eliminate much of the long route. The road was about seven kilometres long and marked as a 4WD only road. Nonetheless we happily drove down the first couple of kilometres in pouring rain managing to avoid any serius obstacles. Occasionally Nick would have to get out to move some big rock or guide me over a large waterbar. We entered an area which was all granite and the road became considerably rougher. We were eventually stopped by a huge protruding lump of rock which thwarted every attempt to drive over it. With some difficulty we U-turned and drove back the way we had come.

We gave up on Woomera and instead headed for an area called Goltons Rock's, about seven kilometres from our campsite. The rain had become much heavier (or was it the fact we had to walk in it?!) and the trudge in was fairly horrible. With zero visibility hindering our location of the crags we stumbled around for an hour and found only one small Arapiles wall with a possible new route. We bailed back to the car, very wet and very muddy. We returned yet again to the campsite for ideas. We did the unthinkable and cleaned up the camp, the Kangaroos had already done a fine job of cleaning our food bowls and eating the leftovers. We then headed for the only dry climbing in the area, Goltons Gorge. I had been here previously so located the wall easily. We only wanted to boulder so we played on the 45' overhung wall for an hour or so until our fingers hurt, our forearms ached and our tummys told us to move on. There were some insane chalked up problems on the wall, one looked considerablly harder than the V10 I saw at Arapiles last week. I cannot imagine anyone being strong enough to crank this thing!

That is it!