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Big Chimney, Rosea

kieranl

1-Feb-2009
11:19:57 AM

Monday was to be a climbing day even though it was going to be hot –figured we’d have to find somewhere cool. However Meg had to make un unexpected trip on Sunday and the weather was not going to be as hot as Monday so rang Norm and suggested Rosea as I wanted to check out Big Chimney for the ACA guide. The sweetener was that the chimney would be shady and we could finish the day with Debutante Direct Start or the first pitch of RIP corner.

Got to Norm’s place by 9:30 Sunday morning and managed a quick getaway after admiring the dogs and fending off the neighbour’s small children who decided to pay us a visit. Up at Rosea the walk-in wasn’t too hot but it was good to dump the pack and find some mottled shade at the base of the route.

Why Big Chimney? With a name like that, why do you have to ask? The 1968 Grampians guide describes it as “one of the best routes of its type in Victoria”; it’s only graded 9 and was put up in 1961 but I have learned that these old routes aren’t to be taken lightly. The first pitch is supposed to be the crux and it looked a bit gnarly, with softer, grittier rock than the best grey stuff at Rosea but I had a rack that weighed a ton and I was leading about 10 grades harder than it was supposed. Norm took one look and decided that I was leading it and every other pitch for good measure.

There’s a photo in the 1968 guide showing Greg Lovejoy leading the first pitch so I decided to face right like he was. This was a good move. There’s a couple of awkward bulges to negotiate low down. A peg runner was promised by the guide at 6 metres but I didn’t place too much faith in that. Well blow-me-down, there it was as promised, all rusty and twisted. Luckily there were a couple of good wires just below it and a slightly insecure #4 camalot in the wide crack above it. A #4.5 would have been better. A couple of good moves and I was standing on a good ledge atop a bulbosity looking with horror at the wide, filthy, unprotectable (without another big cam) crack on my left and the teetering camalot just below my feet. A tentative investigation of the right arête brought salvation in the form of a good medium cam in a horizontal . With that in place I found a bombproof wire a bit higher up the arête and then pulled up on some good holds. A good finger crack taking small cams took me up and back into the chimney where things had got a lot easier. Soon I was buried deep in the cool chimney belayed behind a huge chockstone.

Norm came up, setting the mood for the rest of the climb by complaining incessantly about the rock, the dirt, how hard it was, how he was facing the wrong way and his leg-loops were falling down.

The next section was the real guts of the climb, the great chimney. The modern guides aren’t much help: the next pitch had the one word description “chimney”. This chimney is huge with smooth walls of good Rosea rock stretching away on all sides. The problem is deciding where it is best and safest to climb it. The 1968 guide said to “go straight up from the chockstone so I did. An incipient seam promised the occasional wire placement and the placements were, in fact, occasional. I traversed into the back of the chimney at one point to place a good cam and then again a bit higher, closer to the capping chockstones. Somewhere up there I probably should have gone a bit further into the chimney and belayed but I saw something gleaming out there under the chockstones so went out along a good break to investigate: a U-bolt about 6 metres above me. The chimney was getting just a little wide and insecure here but I foolishly went for the bolt and made it and up onto the chockstones.

As Norm’s complaints preceded him up the chimney I noticed yet more U-bolts spattered about the cliff face further up and out. There didn’t seem to be continuous lines of them so I guessed that the routes involved some natural gear or hadn’t been completed.

Norm arrived and we fixed his leg-loops again and changed over and I went right up some easy ground onto a reasonable terrace. I didn’t realize it at the time but the pitch lengths in the chimney must have been slightly exaggerated so I was on the terrace at the end of the third pitch; I was working on the assumption that I was still on the second pitch. Anyhow the line was obvious, an unpleasant-looking chimney on the right of the terrace. What was really unpleasant about it was the total lack of gear and that it would have to be climbed on the outside edge which didn’t look too hard but would be insecure. I started wandering about looking for other options. There were really only two other options: one was to abseil from the trees on the terrace and this was tempting, the other was the wall right of the chimney which had some flakey features and three U-bolts. The wall was tempting but I didn’t like the look of the start and I remembered the fiasco some years ago in this vicinity with U-bolts that hadn’t been glued in.
Finally I figured I could start up the chimney and then traverse around right on a ledge. The initial moves in the chimney were a real grovel but I got out there and started looking for some runners. Luckily things were a lot easier than my initial inspection had indicated and I was able to put enough gear together to move up on the fragile edges to the first U. A quick inspection showed glue and it passed a tug test so I was happy. The wall was nice climbing on rock that looked fragile but probably wasn’t. A good wire plugged a big gap in the rings after excavating years of detritus. After the last bolt I moved around left and into the gully and mantled the sidewall to the top, gingerly using a branch that spanned both sides of the gully. I had to move well back to find a live tree anchor on the burnt-out terrace.

Norm, with the luxury of the toprope eschewed the chimney and climbed directly up to the bolts though that doesn’t mean he enjoyed it. He even disliked the wall-climbing past the bolts and disagreed strongly when I observed that the rock was better than at the Sun Deck.

On the terrace just below the walking track we were in the sun for the first time on the climb and it was hot. I contemplated a horrible looking chimney left of Hypocrisy thinking, incorrectly I believe, that it was the final pitch. Luckily sense prevailed and we scrambled out left instead.

At the foot of Giant’s Staircase Norm volunteered to go around and get the packs as a reward for my doing all of the leading. While it delayed the time until I could get a drink, I happily lounged in the shade for twenty minutes or so. A peek around the corner revealed one couple on Heretic with the first two pitches run together and another couple severely bushwacked high up in the vicinity of Mixed Climb.

When Norm returned and I had finished one of my water bottles I suggested that it would be good to finish with an enjoyable pitch before going for ice-creams. The elegant-looking flake St Valentine’s Day Massacre (15) was just above us, where the walking track meets the cliff. Norm thought it looked wide and a bit dirty but I persuaded him that it wouldn’t be too bad. The move off the deck was probably as hard as anything else on the climb and the move left to the base of the flake was accomplished without groveling in the dirt. The flake was a joy to climb, true the #4 Camalot came in handy low down, but the moves were all elegant. An easy traverse at the top led to the abseil tree. After the trauma on Big Chimney it was good to finish the day on a high.

Would I recommend Big Chimney? Yes, the main chimney is outrageous. How hard is it really? I have no idea. I probably climbed too far out in the upper part of the chimney but even so it is a serious climb . None of the moves, in the main chimney at least, are particularly hard but think of the final chimney on Agamemnon going for 30 metres. There is protection but it’s well-spaced and double ropes are useful to make full use of it

kieranl

1-Feb-2009
11:23:37 AM

THE line. No action shots as I forgot my camera on the day. The first 6 metres of pitch one is cut out. The action on the second pitch takes place deep within the chimney.

BA

1-Feb-2009
12:15:28 PM

I must have been climbing incredibly well back in the old days. The asterisks in the Blue guide show that I both led and seconded Big Chimney (I assume on different days) but I can't remember anything about it. It must have been about 35+years ago, so my Alzheimer ascents can't be too far away now.

IdratherbeclimbingM9

1-Feb-2009
12:34:05 PM

Good Trip Report kieranl, and a salutory form of advice to the gym-generation!

Now that you have had some classic chimney practice to refresh the skills again, you are well placed to repeat 'Emperor*' at Buffalo !!
Heh, heh, heh.

(*Btw; If you are looking for a partner, I am up for it).

kieranl

1-Feb-2009
12:38:04 PM

Yes, back then poorly protected chimneys were just a matter of course. In the days of poor protection people actually felt secure in them!
It's most likely that I'm just totally pathetic and I eagerly await the advice from young sport climbers who have done Big Chimney telling me to "harden up".

IdratherbeclimbingM9

1-Feb-2009
1:07:52 PM

On 1/02/2009 kieranl wrote:
>Yes, back then poorly protected chimneys were just a matter of course.
>In the days of poor protection people actually felt secure in them!

True indeed.

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