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Chockstone Forum - Find Climbers

Find Climbers In Your Area

 Page 4 of 4. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 60 | 61 to 65
Author
Offwidth appreciation society

shortman
17-Apr-2015
7:38:05 PM
On 17/04/2015 lightfoot wrote:
>I need to hang wih my little fella so ill bring him out in the backpack
>and watch the show. Ill chuck some big cams in for anyone who needs Some
>extras. G

I was thinkin that too.

Miguel75
17-Apr-2015
7:40:15 PM
On 17/04/2015 shortman wrote:
>On 17/04/2015 lightfoot wrote:
>>I need to hang wih my little fella so ill bring him out in the backpack
>>and watch the show. Ill chuck some big cams in for anyone who needs Some
>>extras. G
>
>I was thinkin that too.

It'll be good to see you both out there... The more the merrier;)

harold
6-May-2015
10:59:30 PM
Time for a mini trip report on the offwidth extravaganza. So I'm at my local climbing gym Thursday night, all the regulars are there, "who's coming out to offwidth day at the Youies"... mmm do I hear crickets chirping? Anyway, Friday night a mate messages me he's in. Cool. Although I think maybe he just didn't have anyone else to climb with and wanted to get out of the house for the day.

We get out there mid morning and the VCC crew seem keen on heading around to top rope 1984 - an 18 with such a smooth, flaring, body width start that it can seem impossible to get off the ground. A couple of guys have just backed off Santa's Last Entry due to a dubious block halfway up (more on that later).

We decide to stick to Northwestern's wide offerings. We start off on the easiest offwidth there for a bit of an introduction. Michael leads off and sketches and struggles a little…it’s a grade 6… this will be interesting. Next we go to a grade 14 called Grunt. I’ve always wanted to do this but never had the big gear. Today I have a No 5 old syle Camalot and the biggest size HB borrowed off a friend. Actually standing at the bottom I wonder if the Camalot will even fit. Its super wide the whole way. I stuff my body in there and start chicken winging 4-5m until I can just reach high enough to get the Camalot to stick. My mates laughing so much he just has to get a photo before he puts me on belay.

Of course at this point I suddenly wonder why I thought it a good day to wear shorts to climb granite offwidths.
I throw in the big HB cam as well and chicken wing/cam shuffle my way to the top. Classic. A 12m schooling in the art of the chicken wing. An interesting moment happens a few metres from the top when I shuffle the HB up one time too many, the rope jiggles it and it flops out and slides down the rope leaving me with just the Camalot. OK, lessons learned – 1. big HB cams are sooo floppy they’re totally rubbish. 2. Better to leave a big cam behind in a good placement than shuffle for the endless toprope.

Next Michael jumps on Tozanton’s flaring fist crack. Some swearing ensues, a bit of a fall, but he fights it out to the top. Then its time for Phlebotomy 17, another diabolical flaring start requiring a fairly strenuous mix of thrutching and chicken wing to get up to the nice hand crack. Michael’s turn to follow, I take in a couples metres of slack, there’s some grunting and cursing, the rope goes tight. This repeats for 10 minutes or so. “So maybe I should just lower you back to the ground”…. “I am on the ground!” I crack up laughing, hilarious.
So with that we depart for some more sensible face climbing on the Exam Technique wall. Great day out.

harold
6-May-2015
11:36:01 PM
So, as I was saying, we saw some guys back off Santa’s Last Entry due to an encounter with a dubious block. There was some mention of rapping down to remove it. The climb goes up a finger/hand crack for 8m to a wedged block where the second half of the climb goes to No 5 Camalot offwidth. I’d done this climb a few years back and the block had felt pretty secure. Then I noticed a week ago someone logging on the Crag.com doing the climb and also mentioning the loose block. Mmmm. So a couple days ago I’m out there for a few quick arvo climbs and think maybe I should rap down and check that block… and it’s seriously a ticking time bomb, quite scary to think what could have happened. A 1 metre tall hunk of granite cammed into place by a couple smaller blocks. I lift the smaller block and push it to the back of the crack, give the big sucker a little poke and off it sails.
So a lesson to folks out there, if you see a real danger (like a giant block of death) do something about it, because soon enough someone else will wander up and think ‘I’ll just tiptoe around this thing’ and eventually it all ends in tears. The standard minimum effort is to chalk an ‘X’ as a warning.
And yes I know climbing is not meant to be totally safe and user responsibility and all that, but we do what we can to minimize that danger ( that’s what the rope and shiny gear is for). Be careful out there.
BA
7-May-2015
11:31:59 AM
And besides, how often do you have reasonable grounds for trundling?

 Page 4 of 4. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 60 | 61 to 65
There are 65 messages in this topic.

 

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