Finally, two years to the day after we
arrived in Australia, we parked at the Melville Cave track head,
hefted up big climbing packs and strolled along a good track to
Bushranger Bluff. It was a warm, sunny, strikingly calm (it has been
excessively windy lately) Sunday and we were expecting to find
climbers swarming all over the rocks. Not quite, in fact, not even
close. We saw about half a dozen other climbers all day, strangely
all of them were top-roping, something we saw repeated over the next
two days.
Our first day at Arapiles it was hard
to decide where to climb - our guidebook has 1,200 climbs listed
(although most of them are out of our grade) - on a confusing
labyrinth of bluffs, buttresses and gullies. In the end, we chose
Bushranger Bluff, a long cliff-line that runs roughly north to south.
One side is sunny all day, the other, especially at this time of
year, shady all day. A group of four from Melbourne were having some
kind of instructional session at one end of the sunny side of the
crag, and some top-ropers were haunting the shady side, but other
than that, the crag was quiet. We had a great first day climbing
mostly on the sunny side where the routes are short, mostly easy
(there's a challenging grade 16 at the far north end), but also did
one longer slightly harder route on the shady side. The quality of
climbing was very good, the grades - although no where near the YDS
equivalent listed at the front of the book - are very consistent, the
protection is great, the walk-off easy, the rock clean, the moves
fun. Really, it was all quite wonderful.
Doug at Revolver Crack
Our second day we walked part way up
the tourist track to a side track that leads to Charity Buttress.
This crag has a lot of crack and face climbs in the easier grades but
the rock is quite different to the knobbly, steep, jug covered
Bushranger Bluff. The rock is smoother, steep without the big jugs
and the climbing more technical. Great climbing again, more thought
provoking, even in the easy grades than Bushranger Bluff, but again,
great protection, easy walk-off, clean rock, engaging climbs,
consistent grades. Another big group of top-ropers arrived again, so
we wandered further along the crag and did an obscure but easy climb
up a big buttress to end the day.
Doug and I alternate picks when we are
rock climbing and Tuesday was my pick again. There were a few routes
at Bushranger Bluff that I wanted to lead so we went back there only
to find it inundated with groups of top-ropers. There must have been
about 30 or 40 people top-roping there, mostly adolescents with
"guides". Ropes were strung up on every climb along the
sunny side and many climbs on the shady side. Loath to pack up and
go somewhere else (truthfully I hadn't studied the guidebook enough
to come up with anywhere else) we climbed on the shady side in a
blustery cold wind. The routes we did were really awesome, up a
series of steep grooves, cracks and open books with good protection,
fun moves, and great ambience, the only problem was it was freezing
in the 30 knot wind. Arapiles climbing is very steep and can be
intimidating, but, again we found the grades consistent and, if the
guidebook said there was good protection, there was good protection.
Having a good rack of cams and chocks (don't buy that party line that
all you need at Arapiles is chocks) helps, as does double and triple
length slings to cut down rope-drag.
Doug leading one of the beautiful crack climbs at Charity Buttress
We did finally manage to get on one
route on the sunny side in a brief period between one group of
top-ropers monopolising it and a second arriving as soon as the first
had left. I was quite shocked at the anchor set-ups the "guides"
had put up to top-rope all these adolescents off as they were
constructed of long pieces of static line (nothing wrong with that)
tied off with loose granny knots! Half of them looked as if the
knots were about to unravel and I tightened several as I walked off
after leading a route, although tightening up a granny knot gave me
great pause. I really wanted to rip the entire set up down and
rebuild it.
Yikes
Finally, as we were planning a rest day
the next day, we gave in to the overwhelming tide of top-roping - we
try to lead rather than top-rope - and put a top-rope on a grade 16 .
This was a pretty burly haul up a steeply overhanging wall. I came
off first go and was hanging so far off the wall that Doug had to
push me in and I had to swing hard to finally latch a hold on the
wall. As we suspected, a baby has better grip strength than we do,
but it was fun to climb until our hands couldn't grasp the holds any
more, particularly as we have a day to recover.
So, what about Arapiles? Is it the
"best crag in the world?" Those are big shoes to fill, but
the climbing is certainly high quality. Even in the very easy
grades, the climbing is engaging and the protection good. There are
a few things about climbing here that are pleasant surprises after
climbing in other areas of Australia. One is the guidebook which has
good route photos, access directions, sun/shade information, and,
most importantly, consistent grades. I don't really care what number
grade I'm climbing (although like all climbers I do like to improve)
but it sure does make climbing more fun if the grades have some
degree of internal consistency. It's not merely frustrating, it's
down right dangerous to find yourself on some run-out, sandbagged
horror show. Too many Australian crags have such variable grades
that you really have no idea if the 10 you are about to climb is
really a 10 or is actually a 20! Under some circumstances, it can
even turn out to be a 5. The only thing that could improve our
experience now is if the wretched wind would abate and the sun have a
chance to shine through.
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