We made it up without too much trouble and the rest of the climb is great !
Andrew
.... ok so I'll elaborate a bit in another message
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From: Will
To: INTERNET
Subject: Bungonia: the Truth
Date: Monday, 29 March 1999 10:49
Allow me to elaborate on those little words "without too much trouble" . . .
Saturday 2pm: phone discussion as to whether we should go given the fact that it was about to piss down. Andrew swears to Will that not a drop of water would touch either the rock, us, or our tent . . .
Saturday 9pm Arrive at Bungonia campsite in torrential rain.
Saturday 9.10pm Andrew takes the only raincoat and forces Will to huddle under a pathetic umbrella.
Saturday 9.11pm Tent gets a bit damp before we throw the fly over it (but not too bad).
Saturday 9.12pm Andrew decides to locate the tent on top of the tarpaulin, which was brilliantly positioned (by Andrew) in a dip . . . .
Saturday 9.13pm Andrew disappears into the tent
Saturday 9.25pm Will (having spent the previous 12 minutes attempting to minimse water collection on the tarpaulin) enters the tent to find Andrew comfortably ensconsed on the half of the tent above the dip. Will settles down to sleep in "the dip".
Sunday 2am Will wakes up with cold feet. Strange, considering my sleeping bag is rated to minus 10 . .. Will checks "the dip" . . . Will discovers "the dip" is now "the puddle".....make that cold, WET feet.
Andrew (being both warm AND dry) pretends to be asleep while gloating about his excellent technical manouvering to gain the half of the tent above the high water mark.....
Sunday 6.52am Andrew awakes from a satisfying, warm, dry nights sleep. Will wakes up for the 1,608th time.
Sunday 7.20 am Andrew takes the only cup and forces Will to drink weak black coffee (with traces of toilet paper in it) out of a bowl
Sunday 7.25 am Andrew eats all the tinned fruit
Sunday 8am Andrew makes Will carry his rope.
Sunday 1.30pm While leading the third pitch, Andrew realises that Will is on an extremely uncomfortable hanging belay. Although he has led cleanly past the crux, he takes a sit, blows the onsight, and forces Will to hold him for at least an extra 20 minutes, occasionally pretending to have a go at the moves, but all the while gloating about the discomfort of his belayer.
Sunday 1.50pm Will makes it to the final move of the crux sequence of the fourth pitch during his onsight attempt. Confusion surrounds the reason for his 4m whipper at this point, with the only explanation appearing to be a jealous belayer (Andrew) refusing to pay out slack.
Sunday 2.30pm Andrew deliberately climbs slowly during his lead of the fifth pitch to force Will to get wet by the occasional showers.
Sunday 3pm. Andrew deliberately leaves a knot in the abseil rope to force Will to lead the (now wet) fifth pitch.
Sunday 4pm Having dropped one of Wills slings during his delaying tactics on the third pitch, Andrew offers to replace the sling
Sunday 4.01pm Andrew withdraws the promise.
Sunday 4.10pm Andrew makes Will carry his rope out of the Gorge.
Full subject and sender of this message: Re: S&C trip report|Andrew
Will,
Thanks for the more balanced perspective contained in your trip report. Also you forgot to mention:
me putting the Lyssi (sp?) virus infected bat into that crucial hold so you'd be bitten and die.
me pushing the car over the toe of your boot.
my noxious fart at the belay (well it was revenge for earlier :-)
me hiding your peanut butter so you'd have nothing to eat all day.
me making sure I led the 3rd pitch so I wouldn't get stuck on the hanging belay.
" occasionally pretending to have a go at the moves,
but all the while gloating about the discomfort of his belayer."
ha, ha, ha you caught me out :-) A pity we weren't aiding when I could have reasonably drawn the pitch out to a 3hr lead. Fortunately I had cottoned on to your attempts to abandon me on the top of the 4th pitch by pulling the ropes up and had tied them off :-)
I may have been delirious due to dehydration, but I could have sworn Will started talking with a South Afrikin accent by the end of the trip. All I can say is "when's the next Bungonia trip ?"
Andrew
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From: Will Monks
To: INTERNET
Subject: Bungonia
Date: Monday, 29 March 1999 12:04
Yeah this is much more like the real story . . I have added one or two things in square brackets . .
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Trip Down: Hungry Jacks, lightning and rain, climbing looking unlikely. Set up tent in rain and make bad decision to put an extra groundsheet under the tent to eliminate bindis. Will ends up sleeping in a small puddle while I remain dry :-) [the bloody puddle was enormous when you had to sleep in it!!] Stops raining apart from a shower around 12:30. [but puddle gets bigger and bigger all night] Next morning: Weather looks good, Car won't start. A bit of pushing and we get the car going, fill out the intentions book and head down to the gorge in around 25mins ! Will gets excited by small 25m climbs on the back of SRC crag until he sees the gorge. [rubbish! . . . they were only 8m]
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The mighty Bungonia Gorge
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P1: Will starts up first pitch which he cruises, with slight hint of nervousness where I had that RP fall out.
[I was actually more nervous at the crux when stepping right into that crack below the tree - it would be a "leafy" fall from there, into all those bushes below - I just spent bloody ages trying to arrange some decent small wires to protect that move higher up - and after that, when I realised they were going to give me drag on one rope, I just gave the rope a few big shakes and, sure enough, out it came!! The better one stayed in though]
Rock 'stars' Andrew Bull, Rob LeBreton and friends turn up wanting to do S&C, you snooze you lose boys :-) I 2nd the pitch and self arrest onto a ledge (about 30cm fall) when a hold breaks.
[more like a 1.5m slide, and he was about 8m diagonally below the next bit of gear and looking at a nice old swing, so he had plenty of motivation to self arrest!! (and a big ledge certainly helped)]
P2: Still shaking from the little fall and how greasy the traverse is I set out across it. I'm surprised to find a pretty good #6 hex mid-way *between* the two bolts which makes the pitch fairly casual after that (i.e. no 8m pendulums !) Will comes across and doesn't feel the need to use a sling (probably 'cos it was 3m to the hex rather than 8m to the bolt :-)
[actually cause my mind had gone blank from fear and I forgot]
P3. I get to lead the pitch I came for. With a few shaky moves I manage to get through the supposed crux cleanly and get to about 4m below the belay. There are some tricky and committing layback moves into a gaston with poor smears for the feet. After two goes at it I hang for ages to psyche myself up, meanwhile Will is on that horrible hanging belay (thanks Will I owe you one :-) Third time lucky and I pull through the moves and get to the belay, woohoo !
[we both thought these final moves were the crux, not the ones past the bolts. That is possibly because the laybacking requires good feet, and over time they are getting smoother, so you have to hoick them higher and crank harder]
Will 2nd's it cleanly (what a star) and discovers a bat in a hole in the wall.
[even more of a star cause I had the pack on!! The bat was looking at my fingers in front of his face and licking its lips . . . he had sharp little teeth too!]
P4. Will and I have a short discussion about who wants to lead it.
[read: Will is getting the heeby jeebies and wants to wuss out]
Eventually he decides to have a go and is looking really solid right up until the crux move. A call of "take!" preceded a small fall of around 2-3m on to the bolt at the crux.
[no way, it was bigger than that!! I fell with about a metre of rope between me and the bolt, and ended up hanging on about 3m of rope, so I call it a 4m fall. Eg there were two bolts about 1.5m apart, I fell on the top one and ended up below the bottom one. AND it felt like a bloody enormous whipper cause of the exposure!! (almost 100m up) I was probably only in free fall for 2-2.5m but I was about 15m up the pitch and certainly got some stretch]
He got past it on the next go and made the belay (Will do you want to add anything here :-).
[Umm yeah I better - the real story is I pulled on the draw to gain an otherwise off sequence hold, which allowed me to get my feet up more easily and gain the good hold after the crux with more ease than the correct sequence (the high rockover Andrew did). I decided to pull on the draw cause although I had a pretty good shot during the onsight attempt, I'd been doing some pretty fierce crimping, and thought I better go easy on the old wrists]
On 2nd I think I'm going to get it cleanly, but can't quite do the high rockover required and take a rest. The next time I manage to get my right foot a little higher on some minute little nubbins and do the move.
[I would actually be keen for another go at this move - Andrew found a sharp one finger crimp in a spot where I had a very poor pinch, and he seemed to be able to do a bit more with that hold, so i would be keen to give it a go knowing not to use the pinch!]
Another 22 pitch down and we are both ecstatic about the climbing, positions
[too right - I was stoked at this point!!]
and the fact we hadn't had to resort to any dirty tricks like using the cheat stick we took along.
[well, not TOO many dirty tricks]
The belay for this pitch is awesome, you are in this vertical hole shaped like a hot tub and about the same size.
P5. After a brief rest the clouds started to come in, so I thought I'd better get a move on. The start of this pitch is quite smooth and requires a traverse a fair way horizontally from a bolt. I wasn't feeling that hot, especially since the clouds kept getting darker every few seconds. Suddenly I saw were the line went and got onto some easier climbing around (14-16). It then started to rain lightly so I hoofed it up the pitch chucking in as little pro as I could feel comfy with. I made the chains and the shower stopped so Will came on up, smiling at the funky moves and cool sequences required by the weird limestone features.
[Yup - this pitch is really worth doing - thin slab moves, jug swinging with poor feet, balancy cross throughs etc etc The traverse from the first bolt is a bit of a worry though - probably a messier fall than the traverse on the second pitch: the bolt is directl;y above the belay, so the leader would take out the belayer on any fall until he gets the second bit of gear in. Possibly a slightly harder traverse too.]
Descent: The rap down was a little eventful. I tied a knot in the end of the 9mm rope because I knew that thinner ropes have less friction and can slip through the chains making the ropes unequal in length. Unfortunately neither Will nor I remembered to untie this knot until it was out of reach on the way up to the chains, so Will got to re-lead the pitch to recover it. Not a mistake either of us is planning to make again.
[yeah - we both made doubly sure to check the ropes every time we pulled them after that!!]
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The 2nd time we got it right and we descended through intermittent showers, not enough to really get wet, but it was cold. [heh heh - I had the jumper] It's 5:00pm, we have finished the climb and there is no sign of Greg with my milk shake. I debate hanging around waiting for him to appear, but I guess down-climbing Siblings is hard work and he's running late. At the bottom we packed up and I recovered a sling of Will's I had dropped on P3. The walk out soon warmed us up and then the sun came out and we started to boil. Our calves were already aching from the climbing
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The upper half of the South Wall
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[too right!! the third pitch in particular absolutely canes your calves!!]
and by the time we got to the top we were both feeling knackered. Will tucked into some Weetbix and I finished off my muslei bars while doing the tourist trip to the lookout. A nice drive home listening to Chisel, with the inevitable HJ's stop and a quick gear sort at my place finished off a great trip !
[yeah - a ripper of a day]
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Full subject and sender of this message: Re: Escalade + Other Emails|Greg
"P1: Will starts up first pitch which he cruises, with slight hint of nervousness where I had that RP fall out. Andrew Bull, Rob LeBreton and friends turn up wanting to do S&C, you snooze you lose boys :-)"
HA HA HA HAW. That causes me great hilarity! I picture Will and Andrew roped up at the base of the cliff, ready to start. Up stroll Lebreton and Bull who say, "Hi, mind if we climb through fellas? To which Andrew replies - "No way Lebreton, if you wanted to climb it you should of got your anorexic butt out of bed sooner. Wait your damn turn you pushy bastard." Endless comedic possibilities spring to mind. Me standing at the base of Carthaginian saying "No possible way HB. No, I dont care if you've already got your tape gloves on. I was here first, simple as that. Dont make me tell you twice pal. I'll kick your ass into the next postcode. And shave that stupid mustache, you look like an Australian cricket team member." Humour aside, I had a good weekend too. Led all the pitches on Sweet Dreams on Saturday and went to the Big Top on Sunday with Mike. The Big Top is brilliant with easy access. It has some of the most interesting rock I've seen in the Blueys, hard fused sandstone like on Walking Wounded, one of the sections is coloured red - literally. There is also an amazing boulder on the path up. It is the same size as the huge boulder you pass on the walk up to Booroomba. One of its faces is a blank 80 degree slab, about 13 metres high, which would go at a very hard grade. Another face has a super clean vertical fist crack gradually widening to off width at the top. Again about 13 metres high and the offwidth section is protected by a callously placed bolt. Didnt walk around to look at the other sides. The crag is still pretty undeveloped, but there's massive amounts of rock left untouched. and the routes that have been done are great. Long sustained vertical sequences on beautiful rock with ring bolt protection. Did two single pitch sport climbs, "I have three buttocks"- grade 21, 30 metres, and "Not in front of the kids" grade 23, 40 metres, and then it was 1:00pm and time for Mike to go. Little piece of advice- do not go to this crag with a 50 metre rope. On "Not in front of the kids" using a 60 metre rope, I had to lower from the top of the climb into a tree, anchor and then abseil off that. The crag catches the sun in the morning but starts to get shady at about 1:00pm - good winter crag. It was described by Martin (in the gym) as "a sport climbing crag with a trad climbing feel." His words not mine. Congratulations on getting up S&C. When are you going for the redpoint?
Greg
© 2000 Will
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