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2 weeks on the moon

jgoding

19-May-2007
4:05:37 PM

Recently had a fantastic 2 weeks at Moonarie in South Australia with Naomi, Mike and Jess. Here are a few pics of our trip:

VIEW FROM THE WALK IN:

FLYING BUTTRESS (home to the classic three star grade 15, Flying Buttress). *There is now a new 60m rap station which brings you down over the wall on the right. It is located about 15-20m below the very top on the right side of a ledge, and down a little (big green spray painted arrow shows the way):

CHECKERS WALL (home to Pine Crack and Pagoda):

THE RAMPARTS 1 - home to "The Endless pitch" and a fantastic 18 called "Miles from Nowhere" (the big corner just left of the black wall):

The crux pitch (2) of Miles from Nowhere, climber is Naomi Gibbs:

Nemissis (22***) is on the Ramparts, about 200m right of Flying Buttress. Here is Naomi about to follow the second, crux pitch:

An excellent, very sustained three star 23 (which may be undergraded?) called Goblin Mischif. Climber is a Kiwi called Kevin:

THE GREAT WALL:
Here is Josef Goding on Downwind of Angels (19***) - one of the highlights of the trip. This route has it all, lovely face climbing to get you going, with some sustained jamming up higher. The route is very well protected, and can be done in one very long (approx 55m) pitch. These two photos by Michael O'Brien.

here, another Kiwi called Cliff leading Downwind of Angels (photo taken from the abseil station)

Michael O'Brien leading "Outside Chance" (16*** which starts on a ledge about 20m off the ground, so even though he's only just got going he's got a whole lot of exposure) on this excellent, exposed arete. Lovely climbing.


muki

19-May-2007
9:14:17 PM

Beautiful shots Joe, great colours, fantastic climbing, Goblins shots bring back lots of good memories.


adski

19-May-2007
9:42:23 PM

Nice work Joe! Climbing on the Moon looks great. Good to hear you had a great time. Lovely pink / peachy colours.


Chuck Norris

19-May-2007
11:08:22 PM

good stuff...nice to see a photo of downwind from a different angle. actually its nice to see a photo of the
great wall from a different angle

prb

19-May-2007
11:14:27 PM

Great shots! I think you extended an invitation to Luke and myself to join you for a drink as you passed by at Bottom Camp one evening, but of course we hit the sacks soon after. Thanks anyway.

Earlier that afternoon we were impressed to see you guys having a crack at Nemesis. It's a big day out and is too daunting for most with pitches of 19, 22, 16, 21 and 17 (or the variant finish at 23), and we're talking old-school Moonarie grading. We saw you start the second pitch, then headed over to Checkers Wall and did 3 climbs. When we got back to Top Camp, we noticed you were still on the second pitch. There must be a story there....!


Sabu

20-May-2007
12:09:29 AM

nice photos, thanks for sharing!

jgoding

20-May-2007
9:25:05 AM

Hi PRB,

ah yes I remember you well, and how tired you were after a big day out!

well yes you could say there was a story with Nemisiss. Man oh man did we get a spanking on that. Even the first pitch (19) didn't go down easily at all. Naomi tried it first, but ran out of #2 cams (there is a perfect slot for one just before the steep traverse out right) and backed off after quite a few attempts. I went up thinking, well hell this is only 19. I can do it with my eyes closed and got pretty well spanked. I think I had about 4 rests on that steep bit and after wrapping a massive sling around the loose looking huge jug finally pulled off the moves. Jeez it was tough. I gotta say those Moonarie grades are pretty stiff! Lovely climbing though.

And then onto the 2nd pitch, which Naomi started, took some time on and took a few decent falls on as well (I well remember her very loud ear piercing death scream as she took a 5m plummet off the crux). I think everyone else for about 2km around us must have heard her too! She came down and I go up, again got through it but had to take a rest on the gear both before and after the crux.

Naomi got the 3rd pitch (16) and we bailed off right to a new rap station as it was 4.45pm by that stage. 1 50m rap and we were on the ground by 5.30pm (it was starting to get dark) and a bit relieved. The last pitch looked really fun, but we started way too late (I think it might have been about 11am when we left the ground!).

Our morning was spent mainly pruning the spiky bushes on the walk in track. So satisfying to reduce the number of times of getting slapped in the face by a large branch of thorny mess! I was picking the thorns out of my hands and socks for the next week though!

Needless to say we were both totally stuffed and the following day was a rest day! Ahhhhh the first hot shower in over a week. Fantastic.

And Goblin Mischif (23***) was just awesome, but way hard and sustained. Brilliant moves. one to come back for after a lot of training!

What a wonderful place.

I hear that there is some talk of doing some additional photo topos for this area. There are a fair number of new rap stations which I think would be great to tell people about more clearly.

It would also be great to have some better photo topos I think.

Does anyone have the time and skills to create photo topos? If so I have a bunch of photos that could be used as the base for lots of the main walls/area overviews. Let me know and I'll post you a DVD. Hopefully they can be posted on the SA Climbing club website in future as part of the update PDF.

such as this as a very low resolution example...


Robb

21-May-2007
10:29:24 AM

hi jo
glad to see you enjoyed the moon. it's a magic place. I'll email you or pm my address shortly.
you've drawn the endless pitch in a it wrong. it gooes straight up the black wall.

cheers
rob

prb

21-May-2007
1:07:44 PM

Thanks for the Nemesis story jgoding. But let's not put anyone off - it's a *** classic up the R side of the giant GRRC Buttress, might even try it myself one day!

Yeah, you made The Endless Pitch even more endless!

Climbs we ticked and can recommend include included The Prince, Vortex, The Buckets of Jism and Better Out Than In. But the highlight for me was beefy's Mr Ordinary (pitch 1, 21) on Checkers Wall. I'd worked out the intricacies of the scoops etc up the arete but was fading fast near the top. I prefer not to dyno but sometimes you don't have an option and stuck the victory jug. That's the way to end a trip!


Bel

22-May-2007
3:10:13 PM

always great to see some new pictures of the moon!!


AZ.Steve

22-May-2007
5:22:24 PM

Go climb the Endless Pitch and get your F-n Topo right.

rod

22-May-2007
9:43:41 PM

great thread, the moon was already on my agenda for a roadtrip and that ain't too far away now, thanks for posting and...more TR's, less bolt wars!

dalai

22-May-2007
9:46:22 PM

You coming soon for a tour of duty down under Rod?

jgoding

22-May-2007
11:05:51 PM

Howdy,

I'm sure there is a lot of work that could be done with topos for Moonarie, especially given that there has been so many abseil stations added in the last 6 years or so. It would be lovely to show where they are!

Rob - Thanks for the note re Endless Pitch. I'm happy to revise it, just not tonight. I'll repost it to you when I'm done. I hope the UK is treating you well?

I was trying to suggest that it would be great for someone local to start the task of creating these topos and post them on the SA Climbing club website (fishing for voulenteers who have skills to create topos, and also knowledge of the area so they get the lines right!).

Just another worthwhile project.

Another worthile project would be to do some topos of the Warrambungles (NSW) which is in dire need.

Happy climbing...


IdratherbeclimbingM9

23-May-2007
8:51:08 AM

On 22/05/2007 jgoding wrote:
>Another worthile project would be to do some topos of the Warrambungles
>(NSW) which is in dire need.

What?
... and take all the adventure out of the place? ;-)
Heh, heh, heh.

I'm half serious actually, because many classics there 'wander a little' and if you get off-route but keep heading 'up' then you often end up back on line anyway at much the same grade as the line you have chosen.
Fair dinkum, if you were to doco all the actual variants on some lines you would be 'painting' your topo!! This is probably much more the case for the sub 20 grades which is where my experience is mostly. The more recent harder grades tend to be more specific, as the variants to those are even harder again, and I expect you would know for sure you were off route on those type of outings.

To my limited knowledge I have seen all of the guides to the place ever done, and apart from a couple of outright inaccuracies in the earliest I don't think the latter ones have improved much other than to doco the existence of new lines. For example the 'latest' Rock guide was good for having more photo topos (albeit obscure due size format), but worse for omitting a lot of written detail contained in earlier guides. Descriptions like Pitch 3 35m. Up. Pitch 4. 37 m Up. Pitch 5. 35m. Up more easily to exit gully; tend to keep the adventure, but I know the original guides were more specific with words included like 'step left, trending up leftwards'. etc.

I am not against having good topos but to achieve something of the calibre of the latest Blue Mtns Guide or Buffalo Guide will be a more difficult task for the 'Bungles, as they were building on a larger information base and refining it along with adding photo topos.

jgoding

23-May-2007
1:11:05 PM

Hey M9,

look I agree. The bungles is a place of fantastic adventure and I wasn't suggesting that every line that's
been done gets recorded. In fact my opinion is that that the more popular, well established classic routes
get described, so that at least new comers have some kind of reference.

Good route finding can't be stressed enough for this area - even when you have the best info there is.

That being said if no-one steps up to the plate I'd be happy to do say 2-3 topos to show what I mean, and
make them freely available to anyone who wanted them (preferably via the SRC website as it's their turf).

You could probably use much the same argument for Moonarie - i.e. improve the existing topos but not try
and list every single route.

I'm coming across the same issue with a new "Select Victoria" guide I'm working on with Kevin Lindorff,
Jarrod Hodgson and a cast of thousands. Where possible we will show all the routes listed, but some
times they criss cross too much and it's more confusing to show them on the topo rather than have a well
edited, clear text description (so long as there are some reference points on the topos so you can find at
least where to start!). We're about half way into this and it's about a year away. We are just starting on the
(hard) task of selecting routes and areas for the Grampians. Mt Buffalo and Arapiles are looking good/
sorted, but not finished.


IdratherbeclimbingM9

23-May-2007
1:48:17 PM

Sounds excellent.

It stokes me to know that passionate people are out there doing it, as well as equally passionate people documenting it, and/or refining documentation with new technology incorporated.
Same goes for people who put in time and effort to maintain access to sites as well as the unsung rescuers who pick up the pieces when things fall over.

Thanks for sharing the passion. It is one of the things I enjoy about being part of a climbing community, because it is too easy to take these things for granted.

rod

23-May-2007
4:37:43 PM

On 22/05/2007 dalai wrote:
>You coming soon for a tour of duty down under Rod?

Not particularly soon. Plan is a short west oz visit to see the folks early next year with a bit of surfing and climbing, then about 2 years afterward a proper 12 month climbing tour either before or after building the house.

Ronny

23-May-2007
5:16:59 PM

There is actually a list of all the new abseil stations on the ccsa website here:
http://www.climbingclubsouthaustralia.asn.au/crag.html

Its not very user friendly, but its a start. I don't think anyone really thought about bothering with new photo topos as it was generally assumed that new topos would be in a new guide book whenever that came out - but you're right, it might be useful.

Thanks for posting the photos... can't wait to get back there at some point.

jgoding

24-May-2007
8:05:34 AM

Yeah well there are a lot of great areas which could do with some attention, but may not see them.

I was in touch with Rob Baker - the SA Climbing club president well before going over so had this list (which as you say is a good start). Call me a dreamer but I reckon it mainly takes time and motivation (and a few skills on the computer). The main thing lacking is ussually time and motivation though to see good quality updates done.

In short it needs passionate people to help do some work for the climbing community.

On a different note if anyone in Melbourne is interested in learning how to make climbing topos I would be happy to share what I know. There is a heap of fantastic work being done by a very few (mainly refering to the Australian Climbing Club site www.climb.org.au - see the routes section if you have not already done so). Even if everyone could just add a few climbs they know well to the more popular areas I think this would quickly become a (more) fantastic resource than it currently is (and a lot of areas are done very very well - see Grampians, Nth Gramps, Staplyton, Hollow Mountain side for an idea of what's possible). All you need to do is get in touch with the secretary and request access rights so that you can add routes, correct ones, make new areas etc. etc.

Many hands make light work...

There are 26 messages in this topic.