Coke Ovens Upper Photos

Coke Ovens Upper Cliff, Wolgan Valley, Blue Mountains

A view of the main section of the Coke Ovens cliff. I've marked Pantihose, as the guidebooks have had trouble locating it for the past 20 years! If you look closely you can see Andrew high on his arete (still a project) on Coke Ovens Upper.

Main Wall

The beautiful 80m wall of gorgeous orange rock as viewed from the campsite. Dr Freeze goes 80m straight up the guts of the orange stuff, The Best Forgotten Art goes up the obvious corner at bottom right, then left onto the main face and up the crack through the roof at half height. And if you look closely, you can see me (seconding) and Andrew at the middle left, on the first ascent of Blackadder.

"B" - Blackadder, 87m 24M1
"DF" - Dr Freeze, 82m 21
"TBFA" - The Best Forgotten Art, 82m 21 (or 18M1)

** Dr Freeze 82m 21
A shot taken from pitch 2 of TBFA across the magnificent wall at Coke Ovens Upper of Andrew creating Dr Freeze (pitch 2), a superb 3 pitch 21.

The Best Forgotten Art 82m 21 (P1: * 37m 19; P2: 45m 21)
Pitch 2 would be "the best" if it had cleaned up a bit better!! Until someone invests another day in cleaning it, it's perhaps 'best forgotten'.... But the second pitch is an incredible feature, maybe I'll have to go back to tidy it up for the masses.

A view down the pleasant grade 14 corner section of pitch 1. This pitch is on excellent rock (apart from the first foothold!) and is worth doing in itself. The business is the first 12m off the deck - nice well protected moves up a rest-less face.

bring your big hexes
Another view from the belay, this time looking up at the crux roof on the 2nd pitch. I must say the climbing itself is totally awesome (not to mention that you're 200m above the valley floor!), it's just that the crack didn't clean up very well! If you aid on a cam or two out the roof the remainder is consistent at 17/18 (though you may then need to belay above the roof due to drag).
There's nothing uglier than a dirty crack

Andrew's Arete (still a project) 82m
A mighty line on the right side of this mighty face! P1 has been done - feel free to get on it (45m 18, you'll need stacks of brackets plus wires & cams - it's a 45m rap off DRB). P2 is an active project so please stay off.

A view of Andrew inspecting the moves on P2. (The 12m corner crack close to camera is still unclimbed...)

a fine arete
And here's a view of the incredibly airy 2nd pitch, perched 50-80m above the halfway ledge, and 200m above the valley floor.

Dynamic Lifter 16M1
The worst of the new batch of routes, but for completeness here it is. The slabby arcing crack looks good, though the steepening on the skyline is apparently fairly poorly protected (and hence was aided). Above that there's a simple 60m slab to wander up. For reference, that's Far Queue (13M2) and the big "beak" at top right.

Click here to see a description of routes at this cliff.

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