Another Day at the Office

Steve H. (Emphecema Man) and I (Mr Lame) headed up to the mountains on Sunday hoping to find a deserted, sunny crag with easy access. Yeah right! As if you'd ever find something like that in the mountains when the weather's good! :-)

We initially headed out to Mt York, but the carpark was completely packed, including a group of about 30 school kids and a catering van doing great business!! So we headed back to Zigzag, which wasn't exactly high on either of our lists, but we guessed that Shipley (our other choice) was going to be absolutely chockers.

Although we'd had a late start, it was still pretty shady and chilly when we got to the bottom of the crag. The air temperature was just about perfect, but it was quite blustery which chilled things considerably.

We wandered down the zigzags, thinking of possible warmups ("Giggles" being high on my list). Unfortunately a tour group were already at the crag and had gang-roped the "Deceptor" slab, "Rickapoodle" (making "Giggles" off limits) and the "Rip Van Winkle" wall. So we jumped on what is by now my standard warm up climb - "Dress Rehearsal Rag Pitch 1" (17). The slab was totally in shade, which made the rock quite cold - crimping up the gritty coarse slab was rather painful, but it's a great little pitch!

Steve then started up "Groovie" (12), a series of good looking cracks up some superb rock (just left of "Catweasel"). The flaring chimney section gave him some minor heart palpitations with his hacking cough threatening to send him hurtling out of the heinous thrutch slot and down the blocky ledges below! Once at the "Catweasel" belay ledge he took one look at the offwidth chimney above (at the left hand end of the wall left of "Fer De Lance") and decided to set a belay instead - a good call, I reckon!

I followed up and quite enjoyed the chimney section - it's surprisingly insecure but jugs appear just as the chill of fear is beginning to wrap its cold, clammy hands around your colon (on a grade 12, I hear you ask? Do it for yourself and find out!! :-)

Someone had left a cam wedged in the bottom of "Fer De Lance" so I spent 20 minutes or so trying to get the sucker out. Although two of the cams were still mobile, the other two were overcammed and had locked up against the opposite side of the crack, and I couldn't free them up. There was also a back off biner on the 2nd bolt on the 21 directly above "Catweasel" (the one with the shonky flakes that Andrew top-roped some time ago), but I couldn't be bothered getting it.

I really wanted to do "Black Bart" (19) next, so we down-led the blocky chimney start of "Taipan", "Fer De Lance" etc. and headed back along the crag. By now the sun had swung around and was hitting the crag, so things were warming up nicely.

To cut a long story short (well, somewhat shorter! :) "Black Bart" turned out to be an absolute classic - certainly one of the best single pitch 19s I've done in the mountains. It's definitely better than "Electric Blue" at Barden's Lookout, and probably slightly better than "Aunty Jack" at Mt York (although this gets stars from me since it's on natural gear; although then again it's only worth 18! :-)

Really funky moves up a stylish arete that's a truckload steeper than it looks from the ground. The final 5m are a pearler - the moves aren't particularly hard but after 25 odd metres of pretty sustained climbing you couldn't pull the dick off a chocolate mouse (to quote Mikl)! The holds here are all rounded crimps, and you have to hoik your feet up over a final bulge to get to the finishing jugs - I bet a lot of people have had their fingers uncurl while trying to clip the final bolt and have plummeted. Thankfully I managed to milk every possible rest (and some non-rests too!) and got the onsight. Yay!

With the afternoon sun totally hitting the crag, we decided to head around to "Knot the Mumma" (20), since I thought it might be in shade. A rather dumb choice as it turned out - the sun was shining full on the slab and because it's in an embayment in the cliff it wasn't picking up the cool breeze either. We decided to jump on it anyway.

Although the start on this climb isn't too hard, it's got nothing but psychological protection (a small wire on top of a thin and already damaged flake) above a really bad landing. Take care!

I wandered up past a FH and a groovy mantle to the business - a 6m, blank, low angled slab with a few chalked nothings indicating what everyone uses for handholds. I smeared up past another FH, feeling more and more sweaty and tenuous the higher I got (I felt too tenuous to chalk, which then made me even more tenuous as I got higher!). I then hit "the move" - a big right foot high step with rounded, greasy sidepull crimps for the hands. I managed to pull through this without too many concerns and latched the "jug" beside the next bolt. Unfortunately it turned out to be a horrible greasy rounded thing with the texture of polished slate. In desperation I clipped the next FH, started reeling in the slack, then fear got the better of me and I grabbed the draw to complete the clip. Bummer.

After lowering back to the footledge and rechalking, I pulled the moves right through to the chains, so I'm a bit bummed that I didn't get the onsight. I'm going to use Steve G's excuse - it was too hot!! :-)

Steve then had a lash (on lead) as well, and after falling off just below the mantle (he got a bit off route I think), pulled right through and up past my high point before talking a clanking, scraping fall trying to clip the final bolt. A couple more goes and he got the move, and much more stylishly than me - he smeared his way up the slab in small increments rather than using the high steps I'd used - much more elegant.

By this point we were both pretty shagged so we decided to do one last warm down climb - something with an easy descent.

With the commercial group having finally pissed off, "Giggles" (16) was free so I jumped on that. Having only seconded it once (years ago), my memory was a bit hazy, so I grabbed a rack of cams and got started.

It was *much* better than I'd remembered - a great sequence of moves up a beautiful wall - you just can't help posing on it!! :-)

The holds were a lot juggier than I'd remembered, although the wall was a fair bit steeper too (so I spent most of the time pumped senseless and trying to shake out!). I'm still not sure about the move past the final bolt. I moved left a metre or so and moved up via some flat-ish holds before moving back right. It looked bloody desperate to move up directly past the bolt - has anyone done it that way?

Steve then followed me up, but his arms took on the consistency of wet noodles about halfway up and he peeled off just below the final bolt.

With the gums glowing orange from the rays of the slowly sinking sun, the birds rejoicing in the pre-dusk stillness and accompanied by the delicate sound of trucks compression braking their way down Victoria Pass, we rapped off, packed up and slowly walked out.

Another great day in the mountains!