Saturday, November 16, 2013

A Little Climbing

It's been a couple of weeks since Doug and I scratched out a little cragging in the Cairns area. In the meantime, I've been riding the bike around looking for more promising crags but, so far, have not found anything better. Given the daytime temperatures and the somewhat sweltering humidity, there is no sense driving up to the Tableland to look for climbing (there is rumoured to be some good bouldering up near Mareeba, but it would be insanely hot right now), as it is only possible to manage a couple of hours in the early morning before you start slickly greasing off routes. 

 Longer but low angle

Most people would probably just give up on climbing in this area, but, I still find it fun to boulder and top-rope a few pitches, so this morning we headed off at 6 am to put in a couple of hours before the heat and humidity became insufferable.

For a change, we climbed at the upper crag, which is much longer than the lower crag, but is also fairly low angle for almost all the extra height you get. We managed four laps each before sun on the crag and our grumbling bellies made an end to the day. Next time, I think we'll stick with the lower crag as ambling for most of the route up 4th class to low 5th class (Ewbank grade 8 or 10?) terrain with the odd harder move is not as good a work-out as climbing shorter but harder routes. 

Doug at one of the more interesting sections

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