Cracks Corner

Nick Clow, Steve Holley and I went up to the "Cracks Corner" area on the Colo River (about 10km West of Mandalay). Despite being a rather unimpressive looking crag, it turned out to be much better than appearances, with a whole lot of really nice 10m to 15m cracks all very close together. Most of the cracks seem to be thin (ie. fingers or tight hands), which was a nice change from the usual wide, rounded bum cracks found all over Sydney.

The crag faces North West, so after the first climb we were in sun the entire day - it's also at quite low altitude, so it was lovely and warm - an *excellent* winter's destination. Zero access (you belay on the road!) is also a nice change, and in summer the Colo river is about 20m down through the bush - a very pleasant place to be.

I led the first route of the day, a really nice 15m finger / layback crack (about grade 15), with great wire and small hex placements the entire way up. A short, narrow (#3 RP size!) splitter crack in a blank slab at the top proved quite thought provoking, particularly with a nice big ledge below to catch you should you fall on the dodgy #3 RP!

Nick then led the line of the crag - a 15m thin hand / layback crack (~ grade 18) in nice rock that heads out a 1.5m roof at the top. Very nice (2 stars, I reckon)!

Steve then had a lash at a short (8m) hand crack with a devious start at the far left hand end of the crag (~ grade 14). After taking a couple of falls, he gallantly lowered off and handed the lead to me. In the meantime I'd been recording all the climbs at the crag, and had slipped on some dry leaf litter and barked the heel of my left hand. As you can expect, jamming with a bleeding hand wasn't much fun! Still, it was a good little route, even if the good bit was rather short (above the hand crack the climb continues up a pile of blocks which isn't too bad, but isn't great either).

For a finale, Nick jumped on a hard looking thin crack about 1.5m left of the climb I did first up. After a few false starts he found the hidden jugs and cruised the climb (which turned out to be about grade 14, despite looking a lot harder!). Another nice little route!

After that we were keen to check out some of the other crags about the place, so we drove across the river to Funnelweb Gulch (which is about 2km from Cracks Corner, on the opposite side of the river). All I can say is that it's a pretty creepy crag - the rock is bizarre, it gets no sun (it'd probably be cold even in summer!), and none of the routes have been repeated since Methuselah was a lad. Yuck!

Being thoroughly unimpressed with it (not to mention that the easiest route there (a 19) looked next to impossible) we drove back out, stopping to record all the routes at the "Colo Slabs" as well.

All in all a very pleasant day - the weather was awesome, the routes just hard enough and just long enough to be good fun without requiring too much mental or physical exertion.