Point Perpendicular: Pleasure and Pain

G'day everyone! How were your respective weekends? Did you all make the most of the beautiful weather?

Andrew and friends, Damien and I headed down to Point Perpendicular for a weekend of pants filling sea cliff climbing.

After a slow start on Saturday morning, Damien and I arrived at the Point at about 11:15am, just in time to follow Andrew and Jonas down to the lower seaside cliff, where they planned to attempt "Itchykoo Park" (** 50m 15).

The abseil down to the lower cliff is both terrifying and exciting at the same time. The abseil anchor is natural, and after placing about 50 pieces of gear, we all felt confident that we'd reach the bottom at a respectable rate of knots. The abseil itself is about 50m long, but stops about 20m above the ocean on a cramped belay ledge (I'm glad we had a 70m static rope!). With big seas and the amazing verticality of the whole place, it was a pretty mind blowing descent!

Andrew and Jonas quickly started up "Itchykoo Park", which was the line we had rapped down. It was quite wet, and with the amount of spray hitting the belay ledge 20m up, no prizes for guessing where most of the water came from!

Damien headed off to find "Dreams and Visions" (*** 64m 15) which we'd planned on doing, but after watching him rap down into the littoral zone, and dodge a couple of big waves, I wasn't all that keen to follow him. Nonetheless, when he came running back, shouting words like "amazing", "fantastic", and "dry", I followed him around.

Now the rock on the lower seaside cliffs is nothing like the upper cliffs. The upper cliffs vary between bullet hard grey rock (very similar to the bouldering wall at Clovelly, if you've been there), and a glassy, pocketed rock very similar to the pocketed wall at Nowra (although the weathering is slightly different because of the sea). Basically its pretty familiar stuff, if you've climbed in Sydney or the Blueys.

The lower cliffs, however, are quite different, being characterised by these striking horizontal bands, that are visible from hundreds of metres away. These horizontal bands turn out to be these enormous plates, with deep chossy breaks in between. These plates vary in thickness from about 2 inches all the way up to about 3 feet, with the breaks never more than about a foot high. Take plenty of large cams if you plan on climbing down here!

The first pitch of "Dreams and Visions" heads up a slightly overhanging wall, comprised entirely of these plate/break features, then continues diagonally up and right on a steep slab to a scoop (the belay).

Standing at the bottom of the climb, roped and racked and ready to go, I looked up at this bizarre rock, and hoped (prayed?) that the plates were solid. As it turned out, the solidity of the rock wasn't the problem...

I started off, and although the rock was virtually running with water, every hold was a jug, so it wasn't too much of a problem. It was when I started grabbing the muddy sandy gunk in the bottom of each of these breaks that I started to get concerned. I couple of gritty, wet, dirty cam placements up, I started to get really pumped (not to mention scared!).

Now the initial overhanging wall looks pretty short from the ground, but in reality its about 15m high, with no rests or respite the entire way up. Pumped stupid I managed to pull onto the steep slab, where at least I could get some kind of rest (I think I spent about 20 minutes at this point, but my mind was filled with terrors involving mud, water and chossy breaks, so I'm not too sure!).

From here to the belay the rock dried to the point where it was merely greasy, but the sand persisted, making for some rather concerning hand holds and protection. The belay was barely wide enough to sit on, so with legs dangling out over space (the belay is situated about 4m above a rather large overhang), I brought Damien up on second.

With no room to sit or rest, Damien grabbed the rack and launched into the second pitch. This pitch heads right to a blunt, slightly slabby arete, perched on top of a large overhang. After only a few metres, the plates/breaks disappeared, and the rock improved considerably in quality (although after the big holds found in the breaks, crimping seemed ridiculously hard!). From here the pitch is an absolute three star classic, with good, but well spaced protection, massive exposure (particularly given that the swell was up!), and good rock (although there is one patch of choss underneath a small roof halfway up). Great stuff!!

The climb ends on the "Grey Ledge", the halfway ledge at this point of the cliff. Carefully walking left brings you out below the "Windjammer Wall", which offers the easiest escape up the upper cliff line.

Having had a real "brain pump" on the first pitch of "Dreams and Visions", I was keen to slink up a grade 16 corner crack that Andrew and Jonas had escaped out. With a little urging from Damien, however, I decided to tackle "Grey Mist" (** 27m 17) instead, a sinuous line of cracks on the face just to the right.

This was a climb I had on my tick list for the weekend, and an absolutely amazing line it is, too. The crack(s) wend their way up a very steep slab, and apart from one rest halfway up, the climbing is sustained at solid grade 16 the whole way. This, in combination with the length and my low efficiency at placing natural gear, resulted in me slumping onto a piece about 2/3 of the way up. After another go at the move, I gave up, and lowered off to let Damien have a go. With most of the gear already placed, Damien had no problems with the climb, and set the belay just as the sun went down.

On second I had no problems, being able to quickly and easily do the moves, which previously had taken me hours (what with frigging about with gear). The move I had backed off was certainly not the crux of the route, and in fact it would be difficult to identify any particular crux, seeing as the whole climb was so sustained (but probably never technically 17).

With one good day behind us, we set up camp at beautiful Honeymoon Bay, and dreamed of what Sunday would hold.

Sunday dawned bright, clear and slightly breezy, but after a couple of mishaps (including not finding Andrew et al and breaking a bottle and ending up with blackberry jam and broken glass through my gear and pack), Damien and I decided to call it quits and head back to Sydney.

We got back to the car to find it unlocked. Strange. Then we discovered the things that were "missing": a pack full of clothes, sunglasses, the ashtray of my car (which was full of change for the bridge), Damien's spare rope and ropebag etc. Yep, you guessed it, we'd been robbed, along with three other cars, including one which had had a window smashed to gain entry.

Spending a sunny Sunday afternoon in Nowra Police Station wasn't exactly how I'd planned on finishing up the weekend, but at least they didn't take everything (my tent, the most valuable thing in the car, was left untouched).

So the rundown on Point Perpendicular? "Great climbing, but leave your car unlocked and empty!"