Tuesday 13 November 2012

Swingin Spring

Grosey, Blackbeard's Delight
White Shadow
Forgive me Matthew it's been a while since my last confession blog session. After a long and unusually wet winter, Spring has offered herself up for some primo sessions. After knocking over The Taken, I started working on another little area that I discovered near Halls Gap. It's been awesome too. Lots of varied rock, but a good, solid density of hard climbing. Fellow Red Chili and Wild Country sponsored wad, Scott Walter made his annual pilgrimage down to the Grampians to escape the humidity and general foulness of Sydney and to catch up with the newly expatriated Matt Tait and Vanessa Tocatjin, who were in residence at Arnie Acres. Our little party ventured out with much excitement, ready to do some cleaning and get our crush on. We brushed up the first bloc we came across, a grand distance of about 4 meters from the walking track. Initially, this was to be our warm up boulder, but it didn't quite pan out that way. Instead, the Sex Panther boulder was born. Here's a list of the problems that we managed to establish:

Scoots, battling the mantle on Musk Up
The Quickening


Sex Panther V10
Blackbeard's Delight V8/9
London Gentleman V10
Musk Up V9
Smelly Pirate Hooker V7
Not a bad start to the area...

Everywhere we looked there seemed to be more problems. After initially writing the area off as having only a handful of classics, I was pleasantly surprised to be able to return there day after day to establish new lines. Now called the Bleachers, there is a vast array of awesome problems there, from steep, hard, compression prows, to slopey, font-like classics, made for the technicians amongst us. I even managed to discover and ascend one of the coolest aretes that I have seen in the Grampians. Climbing just like a Grit route and with a similar amount of gear, it is an absolute beauty. It's just awaiting a second ascent now...
Blackbeard's

And a few more new problems:
The Quickening V10
The Walker V9
CMD V8
Evac V7
Force Code V9/10
Gangnum Style V9