Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Trip Reports

Tells Us About Your Latest Trip!

Topic Date User

TR- Excalibur on Old Baldy, Wolgan Valley 19-Oct-2013 At 1:00:42 PM Drake

Message

My fiance and I spent the long labour day weekend camping and climbing in the Wolgan. I was excited to climb the largest and most prominent cliff in the valley- Old Baldy- but Carrie wasn't too stoked for a long and unknown climb. We made a deal: I would lead all the pitches and haul our small bag so that she could climb each pitch without any extra weight.

Old Baldy lower and upper cliffs.

Old Baldy upper. Excalibur is the faint right-leaning crack in the middle of the wall, in-between the obvious lines on the left (Sword of Damocles) and right (Scimitar).

We set our sights on an ascent of Old Baldy via the popular Secret Swinger to Excalibur linkup. We started on Secret Swinger (16), which is a nice looking corner with great pro.

The guide cautions that the route is a bit chossy with some poor rock, but this was only true for a small section. It was a great warm up, with enjoyable stemming, a few fingerlocks, and lots of great nut placements. The guide recommends splitting this into three pitches, but the cave at the top of the first pitch was the sandiest bit of the climb with poor pro, so I ran pitch 1 and 2 together. With a 60m rope and a large enough rack, you could easily climb to the halfway ledge in one long pitch.

After a bit of an uphill scramble on loose ground, we found the start of Excalibur (17 or 18). For a grand line that climbs straight up the guts of an impressive headwall, the first pitch leaves a bit to be desired. It's a crummy looking sandy corner, with one hard move to gain the belay ledge. Carrie described it as a vertical sandbox.

However, above the layer of poor rock was a beautiful headwall of good rock split by an obvious crack. I giddily jammed my way up, enjoying the experience of plugging nuts and hexes into placement after solid placement. There were enough ironstone jugs on either side of the crack that the climbing was never strenuous, even when the crack was in off sizes like rattly fingers. Carrie doesn't particularly enjoy crack climbing, and I think she easily climbed the entire route without setting a single jam.

From Kooks R&D

There aren't any comfortable belay ledges on the route and I started running out of gear after about 40m, so I built a semi-hanging belay and hauled our bag with the tag line. We weren't carrying much besides some water, snacks, and survival stuff (rain gear, topo, compass, etc.), so the hauling was easy. Carrie is quite capable of climbing 18, but too much climbing at Narrowneck has convinced her that 18 is quite hard (e.g., we've done Fuddy Duddy-15, Tal-16, On both sides of the glass- 18, and they're all total sandbags). However, she was all smiles on Excalibur. After another long pitch of enjoyable crack climbing and a dirty slab at the top, we were on the summit. We enjoyed the views and the feeling of solitude, despite the hordes of campers and motorbikes in the valley.

Time to descend. I'm wary of abseiling unless it's really necessary- I suppose I've read too many accident reports. Too many experienced and competent climbers have died in abseiling accidents because of small lapses in judgement. We topped out at 3pm so we had plenty of daylight, so we decided to walk off the back of old baldy. We walked off to the left (looking out) and found a series of cairns marking a path back to the halfway ledge through a series of little slot canyons.

From Oct 19, 2013

Squeezing through these little slots was fun. The cairns petered out at the halfway ledge, and the few possible trails that we tried ended at cliff faces. There's probably a safe walking trail to the valley floor, but we couldn't find it. (I'm guessing the walk back to the valley traverses the halfway ledge?). We had spent some time looking at all the little slot canyons, so It was getting uncomfortably close to sunset. We decided to make our way back along the halfway ledge to find the abseil anchors at the top of Secret Swinger. After one 55m rap, we were on the ground and on our way back to the tent.

We made it back to camp just after sunset, with headlamps shining and with hexes clanging. The neighboring camping party had been worried about us when we hadn't returned by dark, so the kids ran over to greet us when their heard our clanging. It was adorable. Even better, their parents invited us to share their dinner of salad, stew, pasta, and fancy chocolates around a campfire. Carrie and I were touched by their friendly hospitality, and we thoroughly enjoyed relaxing by the fire and eating a good meal with new friends. We even got to hear part of the kids' bed-time stories- James and the Giant Peach. It was an unexpected by entirely pleasant ending to our day.