New Granite Aid

Weekend report from 23rd May 1999

It was to be an aid climbing training day for Nick and Adam. As we were all busy doing other things on Saturday it was only a day trip. We chose a promising sounding cliff called the Rolling Stone Wall about 150km north of Melbourne. The guide described several seventy metre high aid routes on a granite face that is on private property. I was the most refreshed out of our band of merry climbers. Nick, Poul and Adam were all suffereing from a night of 'excess' the day before so were not particuarly enthused. The grey skys also didn't brighten anyones enthusiasm.

We arrived at the country lane around ten in the morning. The guidebook was very vauge and instructed us to obtain permission from a farmhouse. Poul did the heroic thing and donated his time and patience into dealing with the country folk. After several conflicting storys from a few farmers as to the cliffs wereabouts we found ourselves at Bob the Vet's house. With his Phillipeno wife in tow he proceeded to ring up his assorted relitives in the area. He first thought the cliff might be on Uncle Gary's property but then reconsidered and rang his Uncle Barry. He was straight out of the inbred country style book. He told us directions to a cliff which he described as so big 'it takes several seconds for a rock to fall'. This sounded promising and better than the crappy sheep farms we sighted near the road. We hiked into Barry's property for ages looking out for any signs of an obvious cliff line. We saw little apart from a few boulders and lots of sheep. We scrambled over a rabbit fence and started walking down a steep gully. The others were tiring so I dumped my pack and ran by myself down the gully for a reccy. Through the leaves I spotted the edge of a granite wall far down the gully. I hiked back up and convinced the skeptical guys that the cliff was just down the hill. A quarter of an hour later of steep scrambling I arrived at the wall. Much to my disapointment it wasn't the far side of a montrus buttress but instead a small granite tor about fifteen metres in height. It was well and truely midday by this time and we were feeling rather desperate.

The little cliff had two very obvius lines up its thirty metre wide face. The right one was a steep corner with a splitter finger crack up it. The left line was a pencil thin seam filled with dirt. Both looked aidable but I wasn't very sure how hard the left one was going to be. We decided we might as well do these lines whilst in the area. I don't think anyone else had ever been to this area, let alone climbers! Nick jumped on the corner whilst I racked up for the thin crack. Both lines were heavily filled with dirt so nutters became digging implements. Nick's line went easily at A1 but had some scary moments midway up sercumnavigating a very big detached flake. My line was a lot tougher and very unfreeable. The start was okay on small wires but it then thinned and I hammered in a few knife blade pitons. These started pulling out as I scrabbled for my next gear. The rock was fairly soft granite which tended to fall apart when using small gear. I did a few RP moves and got in a good #1 cam halfway up. I was very reliived to get the midway gear as the stuff below was very crap. I continued on up the line which started to gently slab out. Near the top the crack widened but became very clogged with dirt. I dug out a hole and placed a very shallow and uneven #3 cam in the slot. I clipped the aider to the piece after testing it and stood up in my lower etrier. Suddenly my feet cut loose and I desperatly hung onto the newly clipped cam. My lower piece had blown leaving me hanging on to the upper piece with a potential nasty big fall on crappy gear. I managed to clip my daisy into the upper piece and hand over hand up the rungs and finally clip into a rest. It was a fairly scary moment. The rain started falling at this time as I made my way up the very slabby top. The crack finished on a small ledge about four metres below the top. I could see no gear or any holds and the rain was making my footholds very muddy. I tried to free climb up onto the slab but my feet just skated on the slick rock. I eventually resigned trying and sat tight waiting for Nick to finish his route and throw me a rope. After a considerable and uncomfortabe wait he finally arrived at the top and rigged a rescue rope for me. I thankfully hand over handed up this rope and fixed the line for Adam to clean the route. My route felt solid A2+ with potential for a nasty fall at the start and finish. The rain was getting heavier and huge dark clouds swarmed over the hill. At one point we were convinced it was very late as it was so dark we got our head torches out. Of course it was only early afternoon but the weather was confusing us.

Adam (belaying) checks out the view whilst Neil aids up Neil's Route A2+

Adam jugs up Neil's Route A2+ on the first ascent.

After our two new lines had been cleaned the other two decided to do repeats. Adam chose the A1 route whilst Poul jumped on my new line. Poul forgot both pins and hammer so managed to do a dicy clean ascent of my climb. He took a big fall near the top were I nearly plummeted off. Luckly the dodgy gear held and he continued upwards. Adam was very new to the aiding experiance and was having a hard time near the top of the climb. He had run out of gear and balked at the water and mud clogged crack above an upper ledge. He eventally gave in and requested a rope be thrown for a rescue. It had finally became real night at this point and the torches soon emerged. Poul had done the impossible and had freed up the slimy slab at the top. I was amazed he had done this crazy move. When I was up there it was terrorfying and looked impossible. He had bitten the bullet and with a good ten metre fall potential edged up the slick slab in his big aid boots. It was a very impressive piece of climbing considering the weather and darkness. We had heaps of trouble with the rigging of ropes at the top as they were all covered in mud and looked the same colour. All the gear we had placed in the lines were embedded in the mud crack and had to be scraped out. It was a very amusing and dirty situation. After an hour of gear sorting and collecting we could finally start the walk back to the car. It took us over an hour to slog up the steep gully in the rain and hike back along the sheep fields to the car. We were a sodden, sick looking group who rocked up to the local takeaway shop for dinner!

Poul jugs up Nick's Route A1 on the first ascent. The large detached flake visable on his right was VERY loose.

Poul starts up Neil's Route as darkness sets in.

Poul attempts to fiddle in an Alien cam on Neil's Route.

Adam disapears out of sight on Nick's Route. Notice the amount of dirt in the crack and the stars in the night sky above!