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Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

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Author
Booroomba abseil access
Justcameron
5-Oct-2012
5:47:34 AM
Going to head out to Booroomba today, going to try out possum and then hopefully Determinant + Termimant Corner if we have time, or something shorter if not. Roy's crack?

www.canberraclimbing.org.au/routes--guides/climbing-guides/booroomba.aspx

This page suggests that there are a number of abseil routes that are not mentioned in the guidebook - are they going to be worth our effort to find them (neither of us have been to Booroomba before). Seeing as you approach the cliff from the top it would be nice to abseil then climb back up to our packs, is this going to be feasible or are we better off walking down to get our bearings?

Justcameron
5-Oct-2012
5:52:58 AM
PS. Have 60m double ropes

Zarb
5-Oct-2012
6:04:28 AM
If neither of you have been to Booroomba before... allow a couple of hours for aimless wandering and getting absolutely lost.

There are a few abseil points from memory, but have never used them. If you stash your packs up at the top campsite, it's easy to walk down to Possum (physically, not route-finding-wise).

If you were going to go do something on the Northern Slabs, that's when you would start looking for ab points and alternate routes... because that's a bitch of a walk. Especially when you have hayfever.


Edit: Wrote Southern instead of Northern! Sorry!

Zarb
5-Oct-2012
6:06:24 AM
Ps: Roy's Crack is awesome. Definitely put that on your list of things to do.
One Day Hero
5-Oct-2012
7:43:49 AM
Hmmmm, makes me wonder how much time Zarb has actually spent out there.

Roy's crack is pretty cool, however one person has died after falling off it. Take some cams, and slings to stop them walking.

The "Southern slabs" is not an area at Booroomba. There is the South Buttress, the North Buttress, and the Northern Slabs (which are just the continuation of the North Buttress).......and the "Buttresses" are pretty slabby too, just to confuse things even more.

There are a couple of abseil routes out there (on both buttresses), but you'd have to be lucky to find them for the first time from above. The right way to do Booroomba is to leave your bags at the picnic log at the top, walk down with harness and rack on, then climb up and top out back to your bags.

Don't try to access the North Buttress via the north scree descent, it's an overgrown nightmare. Also don't try to cross between North and South Buttresses across c--ker's Gully. The South Buttress track is pretty easy to find. The North Buttress track is found by going up to the obvious tourist lookout, then walk south along the clifftop (with a bit of scrub bashing) for about 50m to a pretty obvious descent ramp/gully thing which angles back North towards the big bit of rock you are aiming to climb.

Follow your nose, you'll be fine, Determinant has 2 pretty good pitches but the rest is in need of a mow (waist high scrub is not necessarily a sign that you're off route). Terminant Corner is superb. Take at least a couple each of thin hands to thin fist pieces, as it's actually a proper hand crack for half the pitch.

Zarb
5-Oct-2012
8:03:32 AM
Woops! I meant North. Been a while... Edited.
Justcameron
5-Oct-2012
8:21:25 AM
Thanks a bunch Odh, just what I was after. At the top picnic spot now...
widewetandslippery
5-Oct-2012
8:23:51 AM
I second the get ready to get lost. Its a hard crag to find your way around. Also consider the weather. South buttress mornings or north routes in morning shade (hermes, inscisor) may be a better bet unless. You enjoy being cooked
One Day Hero
5-Oct-2012
6:01:13 PM
On 5/10/2012 Justcameron wrote:
>Thanks a bunch Odh, just what I was after. At the top picnic spot now...

No worries, glad to hear that interstaters are getting out there. Looking forward to hearing about how it went.
Justcameron
16-Oct-2012
3:44:40 PM
Well I checked the forum on my phone from the top picnic log and thus didn't bother trying to find abseil locations. First climb of the day was Possum 13 50m. Wandered off on what we guessed was the track down to South Buttress and thought we would come down coc-ers gully but as the track bent around the bottom of the cliff we recognised that we were in fact coming from the SW end of the crag, but were quickly able to recognise some climbs and wander along to possum.

Pretty tough moves getting off the ground, then a superb traverse on the second pitch, then some more tough moves getting around the hanging blade on the 3rd pitch. Thoroughly enjoyed though.

After lunch we had aspirations of heading out to the northern slabs to get on Denethor/Lepton, but unfortunately we did not recognise the climb as we walked past it, thinking we were still at the "Central slabs".
We then continued bashing our way along in the scrub, thinking we had arrived at the end of the "Central slabs" and were looking for the "Northern Slabs." We bashed along for quite a while before giving up and returning along the base of the cliffs. Still unable to recognise any features we were quite at sea.

Finally when we got back to Denethor the penny dropped and it all fell into place and we were able to locate ourselves relative to Northern slabs/the terrace/central slabs. However by this time we had run out of daylight to start a 4/5 pitch climb so we elected to walk out to the car and drive to Kambah rocks (my buddy has recently moved to canberra and wanted to check out the crag.)

Another extended walk (made somewhat longer because we assumed that the river was flowing in the opposite direction - the guidebook says to walk upstream) so after exploring the local nude bathing area (we looked very out of place, and we were, an experience I do not need to repeat) we finally set off in the right direction to find the crag. Got there right on dusk and got up The Bummer with my headtorch.

All up a pretty nice day of bushwalking!
allnewmaterial
16-Oct-2012
6:42:07 PM
What kind of annoys me about Booroomba is its North/South names of features - when it is definitely more of an East/West orientated crag.
So when Damo says to "then walk south along the clifftop", I guess he really means to walk West.
A nice place tho. The Denethor to Ivory Coast link up is recommended.
widewetandslippery
16-Oct-2012
7:02:21 PM
firstly where is this nude place on the bidgee and is it all soggy sao or hot tuggrenong chicks?

Your geographic failings at booroomba are par of the course. Its a great crag and well worth going back to.
One Day Hero
16-Oct-2012
7:24:49 PM
Meh, it's a difficult crag to navigate because there aren't a lot of distinctive features. Like Bungers, even with photo topos you'd probably have trouble working out where you are. Hermes is an unmistakable line to mark the start of the North Buttress, then the Rocketman Prow, then the steep orange bit of Smash Palace. You can see most of those features from below and hopefully work it out from there, but it just takes a couple of visits.

Wide, the "nude beach" is the soggy sao ground zero of the A.C.T.

Also, it's kind of NNE/SSW, and the buttresses are rounded.........if you walk west off the lookout, you'll definitely step off a cliff. The N/S approximation has worked for 40 years, just deal with it.
Justcameron
16-Oct-2012
10:54:49 PM
I assure you there were no chicks to be seen, hot or not. There were a lot of men.

The place is called Kambah Pool. Turn right for naked men. Turn left for a half hour walk to Kambah Rocks climbing area.

There are 14 messages in this topic.

 

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