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Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

Area	Location	Sub Location	Crag	Links
All NSW	(General)	(General)	(General)

Topic Date User

Elanora Heights, Sydney - status? 5-Jan-2006 At 10:22:41 AM Nottobetaken

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Does anyone know what became of this crag (up the valley from Narrabeen Lake)? I stumbled upon it in early '96, shortly after some bush fires - and at the time it was 'undiscovered'. That is - there was no path into the area and no routes. At the time I thought that it could be one of (if not the) best sport climbing venues in Sydney - if properly equipped. 6 months later however I returned to find most of the obvious lines had indeed been bolted - and most of them (aside from 2) red-tagged. Legend has it that the people responsible for the equipping had never placed bolts in their life, and chose this great venue to practice their skills. The result? Bolts started pulling and the lines got abandonned. Apparently Martin Pirtcher took a 10m groundfall in '99 for this same reason (according to Peter Monks's site). What a waste of a potentially good crag.

I remember in particular 2 lines on the main cliff that would've been 2 and 3 stars respectively - 'Wake Up, Time to Fly' was given 23 at the time - but I think it's marked as 24 now (in Monks's online guide). The central line through the roof was 24/25 and excellent - but apparently a couple of years later it (like the others) suffered from bolt failure. Apparently the bolters didn't mix the correct ratio in glue components.

The 'micro cliff' 200m before the main course also had a couple of good looking lines on it. I did one of them in December 1998 and called it 'Left Wing' - which was a left hand start to an existing project. The bolts were expansion - exposed for most of their length. Thankfully I didn't clip half of them anyway. Was this crag ever re-equipped - or did it fall into the 'too hard' basket? It would be a shame if it was the latter...