Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Trip Reports

Tells Us About Your Latest Trip!

Author

TR beer and foaming at the Weddin

mikllaw

4-Sep-2011
10:40:54 PM

Left Sydney early and hit Grenfell by Dave’s third beer, or as he says, I hate long trips (No wonder he doesn’t drive). It’s a bit under 4 hours, or think of it as a shorter and more interesting version of the trip to Arapiles from Melbourne.

We went in the meat raffle at the Royal Hotel but only won 6 tinnies. After this we staggered through the dark to the Grenfell show to have a raging time, but 2 of the rides looked too extreme so we ended up on the Ghost Train which was lame enough for this bunch of extremeo boulderers

Spent the night in the house of many critters, and I have a nice shot of Dave at breakfast ready for a bit of dry tooling with a gay ice axe and a can’o’beer.

Weddin mountain is just out of town, we drove west through fields of yellow canola, averting our eyes from the granite bouldering areas that Adam had developed at Pig’s place (his mate). The range looks huge from the east, right at the top there was a very orange 70m cliff, but it promised to be an hour’s painful walk at least.

We drove around the Western side to the tourist areas and did 2 of the tourist walks. The first walk was up the Bertha gully track (cutting through Seaton’s farm to save a trudge).

We set up boulder base camp here and tried about 10 problems up there.

A lot of the problems were a bit too high for us, or some are conglomerate which is a fancy way of saying there aren’t any holds. Even so we did a few nice problems , a stepped roof,

a little boulder with lots of monos and a few crimps which had 3 good problems. I tried 3 obvious lines right on the track that were all a bit terrifyingly high, besides, Saturday morning is too early for a bad fall.

Back to the car for lunch where I had a balanced diet of protein and carbs perfect for my body type and level of training. Adam and Dave had beer.

We walked up the next gully (the main one to the summit, can’t remember the name) for 4 minutes to an awesome stack of big boulders, but they were all too tall/blank/hard/committing so after a bit of pre-boulder posturing we moved on.

Two minutes further up the creek I found an arête in the stream bed, threw myself at the starting moves for 10 minutes, then found easy ways to do them, then struggled on the crux, found that easy but couldn’t topout. I cleaned a few holds hanging from the ‘crux’ then couldn’t get off the ground for a while. I rested and then did it, it would have been so much easier if I had just flashed it, where I would have given it V2, as it was I reckon it’s a 5.

We walked 50m further up the creek to Adams’s “Arapiles” boulder which was a total jugfest, but everything was too diagonal to hang onto and we flopped and flailed our way up 2 more problems.

Back to Grenfell, the home of beer, for the night.

Sunday morning and we strode into the future yet again. Or at least we stumbled about startling small animals while Adam had a cigarette, a cough and a swallow for breakfast, then drove a few minutes west of town up the road to Holy Camp. Walked and “found” 2 more good boulders 3 minutes up the track. We did about 10 problems, but the rock was strangely clean.

Spot or boot up?

Too many moves for fingers and toes by this stage so we dumped the gear and walked up to the “very orange 70m cliff” which was stiff half hour's walk, and disappointing choss but good to cross off the list. Poor Adam, because he lives in Grenfell, has to do multiple new routes on it.

I earlier said we “found” those boulders because as we were packing a car pulled up with a local, Peter, who’d been bouldering there for years turned up and asked us not to bring the crowds.

I didn’t get to the granite at pig’s place, next trip.

Rating: If you’d boulder at the trackside boulders below Taipan Wall, you should start driving now. An excellent stop on the way to Araps or the gramps from Sydney, and perfect in winter. Don’t even think about summer.


IdratherbeclimbingM9

5-Sep-2011
12:46:19 AM

On 4/09/2011 mikllaw wrote:
>

>Spot or boot up?

Dave would regard an attentive spotter as one who is holding the next fresh coldie for him rather than a smelly climbing shoe!

~> I also love the shallow water arete-ing pic!

A good Trip Report hot off the press for us who are deprived of climbing this weekend to savour.
Thanks for posting it.


rodw

5-Sep-2011
7:45:47 AM

On 4/09/2011 mikllaw wrote:
>Left Sydney early and hit Grenfell by Dave’s third beer,

Damn....he must have been Psyched and making sure he had optimal carbo load for the sends...he does 3 long necks on the way home from Wingello

mikllaw

5-Sep-2011
8:15:45 AM

I told someone before the trip that I was ...
"Off to check out weirdness, possibly on rock, in central NSW this weekend with a star cast of wastrels and boulderers (or do I repeat myself?)"

It was very beautiful out there in the bush, very grampians rock and guullies.

We were rooted from doing the overextended scrambling that new route fever brings, walk 50m to goodlooking boulder, see next boulder, scramble up hill 20m to boulder, see next boulder etc etc.
It's only when you have to go back to the car do you realise how far you have walked.

croxbu01

5-Sep-2011
3:55:53 PM

Nice Story, I am from Young and have looked at rocks in the weddins since i was a boy, cool to see some climbing going on. shame the 70m beast is chossy, it looks so good from a distance, thanks for sharing!


wallwombat

5-Sep-2011
4:03:11 PM

On 5/09/2011 croxbu01 wrote:
>Nice Story, I am from Young and have looked at rocks in the weddins since
>i was a boy, cool to see some climbing going on. shame the 70m beast is
>chossy, it looks so good from a distance, thanks for sharing!

Only the lower band is chossy.

If I decide to take up Mikl's challenge and put up some routes on it, I'll send you a PM.

widewetandslippery

5-Sep-2011
4:07:57 PM

NB. The raffles at the Royal Hotel Grenfell are good. I always win!


rodw

5-Sep-2011
4:52:57 PM

On 5/09/2011 wallwombat wrote:
>If I decide to take up Mikl's challenge and put up some routes on it,
>I'll send you a PM.

Just sink heaps of steel in it and it will eventually become stablish.....???


wallwombat

5-Sep-2011
6:37:48 PM

On 5/09/2011 rodw wrote:
>On 5/09/2011 wallwombat wrote:
>>If I decide to take up Mikl's challenge and put up some routes on it,
>>I'll send you a PM.
>
>Just sink heaps of steel in it and it will eventually become stablish.....???

If I can find a local unemployed Sherpa to lug the Bosch and some bolts up there, I might.


Capt_mulch

6-Sep-2011
7:09:15 AM

>Only the lower band is chossy.
>
>If I decide to take up Mikl's challenge and put up some routes on it,
>I'll send you a PM.

Go weird choss projects!!!

croxbu01

6-Sep-2011
12:07:38 PM

I don't know that the locals would want much development but for the walk in I dont think that would be too much of an issue. I'll have to look at some ways up it, Probably look at Trad routes more than bolted sport routes i reckon as it is a fair way from the parking lot


wallwombat

6-Sep-2011
12:27:26 PM

90 % of the locals haven't even been out there. You could bolt sport climbs up there and no one would ever know. I don't, however plan on bolting sport climbs up there. I know how much my pack weighs when I'm out for a days bolting and there is no way I'm walking to the top of that cliff with that much crap.

If I do need to place a bolt or two, then I'll use my hand drill.

Anyway, this sounds like rock climber talk and I'm only a boulderer, so enough of such talk.


wallwombat

6-Sep-2011
12:41:30 PM

The ghost train at the show seemed to have more of an effect on widewetandslippery than Mikl and me.


Capt_mulch

6-Sep-2011
3:35:54 PM

I told you he was evil!!! Quick, a wooden stake to the heart!!


rodw

6-Sep-2011
4:01:39 PM

That just becuase he dosnt have a beer in his hand.


wallwombat

6-Sep-2011
4:24:24 PM

I'm pretty sure he had one in his pocket.

I know I did.

SteveH

6-Sep-2011
4:58:17 PM

Just out of interest... Is the third pic bouldering over graffiti, rock-art or just a funky natural feature. Hard to tell in the pic and hoping its not rock-art!


wallwombat

6-Sep-2011
5:21:34 PM

If you mean the stepped roof that Mikl is climbing, it's just a funky natural feature.

We saw no rock art anywhere in the park. I don't recall any graffiti either.

SteveH

6-Sep-2011
5:59:47 PM

On 6/09/2011 wallwombat wrote:
>If you mean the stepped roof that Mikl is climbing, it's just a funky natural
>feature.
>
>We saw no rock art anywhere in the park. I don't recall any graffiti either.

Rad looking feature! Looks like a fun trip with plenty of misadventure to boot.


IdratherbeclimbingM9

6-Sep-2011
9:52:09 PM

On 6/09/2011 davidn wrote:
>On 6/09/2011 wallwombat wrote:
>>The ghost train at the show seemed to have more of an effect on widewetandslippery
>>than Mikl and me.

>I'd have offered all three of you a job.

+1 (Agree)

ODH's fuglyhat doesn't hold a candle to mikl's!

Here is a scary thought...
Imagine Mikl bouldering in the matched set of boardies (like in pic below), and the polkadot beanie!

There are 23 messages in this topic.