A First Taste of Californian Rock

Well I finally managed to get out on some real Californian rock this weekend, making the most of a totally stunning weekend of weather (temperatures in the mid 20s, not a cloud in the sky etc. etc.).

Billed as "the only decent bouldering in the city of San Francisco", and only about 10 minutes drive from home, Glen Canyon Park sounded like a good option for an hour or two's bouldering. A quick drive down highway 280 then a bit of mucking about trying to find the parking spot described in the guide and I arrived.

It turns out that the parking spot described in the guide is about the most ridiculous spot possible. First up there's the human "frogger" game across the busy road (with blind corners in both directions just to make it really interesting), then a plunge through thick shrubbery to get into the park (all the while wondering whether you're brushing past poison ivy without realising it), then a slide / stumble / roll down a steep landslide riddled scree slope to get to the bottom of the canyon! And when you get to the bottom you realise you're at the wrong end of the canyon and face an uphill walk to get to the boulders! Thankfully you could walk from one end to the other in about 10 minutes flat, so it's no big deal, but you'd think the guide would say to park up the top end which is not only a lot closer to the boulders, but is also where the official Glen Canyon track starts.

At least the boulders are obvious - situated a little way above the track, halfway up a treeless grassy hill - even Blind Freddy could find them with his eyes closed I reckon! The bouldering area is made up of a main line of cliffs (about 30m long and up to 8m in height or so) and a series of small buttresses and walls (up to about 10m in height) located up and behind the main wall.

The rock is some kind of metamorphosed sandstone - very hard and in many places highly polished. The rock has very clearly defined layers, each about 1 inch thick but very distorted and twisted along the length of the crag, forming these big swirls and stuff. As a result the rock is quite shattered (mainly parallel and perpendicular to the strata), giving the rock a cubic quality - lots of horizontal and vertical square edges (quite hard on your skin, but lacking in friction - quite weird really!). Lots of opportunity for eliminate problems.

Unfortunately the landings aren't great - there's quite a few large blocks down in front of the cliff, and many more sharp points and edges poking up from the grass and dirt - a crashmat would definitely be a big help, at least to deal with the smaller stuff.

I started out on the main wall and did a couple of easy traverses and stuff just to get a bit of a feel for the rock. It was a bit unnerving at first, since it all looks like it'll rip off without any warning, but it's obviously a lot stronger than Blueys / Sydney rock since I didn't find anything loose at all (apart from a couple of small loose bits that were locked into the cliff).

I then topped out up a striking line in the middle of the lower wall - a lovely easy diagonal layback finger crack. I then wandered over to a prominent buttress with a cave scooped out of it on the upper tier - apparently this is a local testpiece and has a couple of top rope bolts. It looked bloody desperate - not many holds, and the top of the scoop is almost horizontal for about 8 feet and is about 12 feet off the ground. I mucked around a bit on the nice looking vertical face to the right (while a couple of guys smoked dope and procrastinated about the testpiece below me!). After a bit of upping and downing I eventually sent a really fun but slightly thought provoking dead parallel glassy finger and hand crack about 15 feet high. The biggest problem being trying not to get too stoned from the guys below! :-)

I wandered back down to the main cliff to try some harder problems and realised one big drawback of the cliff. Because the rock is so hard, it doesn't erode out from the bottom (as happens at some Sydney crags eg. Sissy), so the steeper sections of rock all start higher up the cliff (often at head height or higher). Without a crash mat and spotters this makes it hard to push yourself on harder problems without running the risk of back slamming onto one of the sharp boulders lying around the base. So I mucked around a bit more, topped out on a couple more problems (I got chased up one by a wasp!) and called it a day.

All in all not a bad little spot, particularly given that it's pretty much in the middle of the city. It's certainly not Lindfield Rocks, but with a crash mat and a spotter or two I can definitely see a few more visits being worthwhile.

So what did y'all get up to? Do you still need a snorkel and goggles to get around Sydney??? :-)