Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Climbers in Buffalo gorge, Mon 12 March 21-Feb-2013 At 9:52:02 AM ithomas

Message

It's not Caligula. It is almost certainly Highway 61. When that route was climbed (by me, Keith Bell and John Fantini sometime in the Pleistocene) we freed easily up to the nasty, dirty and wet off-width roof where we set up a tangled hanging belay. The roof was turned by Keith with the aid of a couple of tube chocks which were used in place of a couple of bolts placed by the first ascentionists, after which it was free to the top. In those heady days, which have been called "the bolt wars", we took more pleasure from climbing a route clean (without pitons or bolts) than from any other sort of ascent. Childish - perhaps? But really, we were only children. So childish in fact that we wrote a letter to Argus or Thrutch proclaiming the results of our bolt eliminations on Caligula and Highway 61. We were later horrified to find out that we had inadvertently reversed the meaning of our note so that it now seemed that we approved of bolts! In any case, it was Melon (Chris Baxter) who eventually slept the sleep of the self-righteous and not us. I have pictures, taken on the same day, of we three on Caligula and Highway 61, and from those I can see that the route in question on this thread is not Caligula. The bell-bottomed (and that's all John and I could see as Keith led the second pitch) curved roof is pretty obviously that which sits on top of Highway 61's main corner.
Ian