Ascents of Macraderma

Lower yourself into the pit of despair. Filthy, and dark, bring your headlamp. Emerge back to the harsh daylight, battered and sweaty.. if you like suffering this one is for you. 17 seems a bit of a sandbag..

Big bachelor got his first run down Macra; a pefect metaphor for marriage. X1 lap in the dark challenge and another as a speed challenge, 3:38 for myself then promptly beaten by bro with 2:58– luv it.

Someone's taken a leak down there recently, bit of a stink up top.

x2 laps

Down climbed route top to bottom and then back up.

Three shots of the good stuff. No.2 traversed over from big ledge at halfway to other side for a change of scenery, unroped and climbed a short handcrack and then chockstone hopped up and out the other side. The perspective change revealed a sweet looking diagonal crack that rises up from the other side to the Macraderma entrance.

X5 clean laps and saw my first bat!

From the womb of the mother earth I have been reborn anew. Hats off to those with enough self-loathing to lower in and pull the rope.

Welcome to bat country Mike.

Filthy down there this arvo, needs a good vacuum.

An experience

What a cosy little hidey hole

theres no way people lead this and pull the rope

Holy shit

Foooookin nails hard down the bottom

Just to feel the flow - no no, this time down to retrieve dropped gear. No metamorphosis for me, just a lot of grunt and a bloodied knee.

A ride down to the basement to cap of Rach's stellar trip and her final climb and she loved it. "It feels like I'm giving birth!" - "It feels like I've been reborn!" A frog rite of passage

Satisfying lead down under with great flow and moves.

Such a unique route, everyone should do at-least once

I don't know how yim convinced me to go down this hole in the ground. It was pitch black and covered in dirt and bugs. Full on chimney the whole way up sacrificing pants and elbow skin along the way. Good to do once and then convince others to do it

Hot down there this arvo, had me working hard. Ready for the lead

Top rope train on frog's secret chimney, drying out nicely and so satisfying to climb.

Psalm 139:7-12. Wow, what a surreal experience climbing in a subterranean chimney! Alone on the crag rappelling down into the belly of the mountain with awe and trepidation of what waited below, I climbed out into the late arvo sullied and sweaty yet refreshed and transformed by my time in the depths. Chimneying through a strange world, circled by moths eyes flashing red, spider webs with water catching diamonds in the lamplight and the silence; no outside noise just the sound of harness scrapping up the wall and deep breathing rising towards the bright.

It was desperately wet at the bottom and so i had to jug three or four meters of the lower section. I wouldn't lead it in its current state and with the limited pro down low but hopefully with time drying out I'll make a return. A must do climb for all its uniqueness at frog. Incredible!

This climb is not good for ones general health

Exhausting. Full body pump

Actually quite a fun and unique outing once you accept you are going to get dirty. What's less fun is topping out & the rope has gotten stuck, having to go all the way back to the very bottom, then jumar back out again.

Actually quite a fun and unique outing once you accept you are going to get dirty. What's less fun is topping out & the rope has gotten stuck, having to go all the way back to the very bottom, then jumar back out again.

I've heard so much about this route and thought "you've gotta try everything once... right?". Well it's pretty much what all the descriptions and comments say. Type 2 fun for the first half (wet, muddy, limited holds, practically no pro, etc), but it certainly makes the top half feel like a 5 star climb and the feeling of accomplishment crawling out into daylight is pretty incredible!

Definitely one to do at least once.

Great for the story... smells like piss. 10/10

Not the most inspiring climbing, but a fun adventure and one of the only routes you can climb in the middle of the day in summer!

(Would recomeneded waiting a while to climb this after rain) Pure shitfest, manky, disgusting, call it what you will, it was fucked. The second half was alright.. First half was absolutely disgusting, especially after recent rain. Itd probably be alright if the slab wall was dry. If you want to get scratched up, dirty and grunt for 30 minutes up a filthy half body in half body out chimney then this is for you, spent approx 3 and half hours in this hell hole belaying and climbing. Would rather cop 2 pencils through each eye. Also prussiked a metre or 2 on the rap rope past a gross section.

Set out in search of an adventure. Was not dissapointed! Bottom half was absolute trash, thrutching my way up a tiny chimney as the big slab wall was too moist. Would not force my worst enemy down that hell hole. Top half was epic, but protection was limited. Easy, sick climbing to a victorious and well anticipated topout. Took a minimum of 4 beers to recover from this ordeal.

Memorable. An adventure. Type 2 fun. Borderline type 3. Never, ever, again =D

This fucking broke me for the day, both via exhaustion, pain, and because I kept compulsively knee barring and thrutching what should have been perfectly normal moves on other climbs later. On the plus side, a lot better at tight chimneying than when we went down there Recommend wearing long pants. And maybe just stop halfway down where the rock, gear and climbing are all quite good. The bottom half...

Just for fun, never again.

Hardest 17 I've ever done. Memorable experience. One and done!

So me and Ryan dropped my green cam down this ... hence the top-rope ascent from having to get lowered down to retrieve it! A great unexpected mini-epic. PS - the chimneying on this is some of the most varied and interesting mid-size chimneying I've done. So good! Everyone get on it!

Knocked this off my bucket list! Glad I’ve done it, it was a wicked adventure, but I never intend to do it again. Incredible experience but a terrible climb.

The bottom is not as tight as it looks, don’t be put off by the size. It’ll never host a party, but 2 people fit fine.

Super slippery, I fell multiple times in the lower squeeze but re-wedged myself each time before flattening my belayer (or weighting any gear). Some cool 3 dimensional movement in places.

Gear beta: Use passive gear, cams just aren’t secure in the general dirtiness of the rock. The layer of soft calcite over everything also makes any cams pretty suspect. I thought the available pro was adequate.

30m deep cave chimney... Pulling the ropes down there was fun... my headlmap ran out of battery after 5 metres