Site navigation

Nowra 1,595 routes in Crag

  • Avg. Height: 16m
  • Style: Mostly Sport
  • Favorites: 348
  • Ascents: 31,311

Grade search

Leaderboard

Instant PDF

KML KML

Unique Features And Strengths:

The best sport climbing in the state. Sometimes ugly, but great climbing, with a huge variety of styles.

Description:

Nowra is a fantastic sport climbing area, in quite a beautiful urban setting, with many of the crags sitting in valleys carved out by the Shoalhaven River. It is not unusual to park your car outside someone's house, then disappear into the bush, and 3 minutes later be at the crag. The climbing is characterized by being steep and powerful, there are not many pure endurance routes. While the climbing is not as visually inspiring as other areas in Australia, once you're on it's very good.

Nowra is a very comfortable place to climb, most of crags require a five minute approach at the most. All the routes are bolted with easy lower offs and the rock is generally very good. While Nowra doesn’t offer the casual café style that the Blue Mountains has, it is a good location for rest days, with reasonable surf only a short drive away. Nowra itself has all the amenities you would expect from a reasonably sized city.

For the beginner climber Nowra doesn't have a lot to offer, all the easier type climbs do tend to be the chossier ones, and there is very little below grade 18. For the intermediate to advanced climber however there is a lot of very good routes to do, especially if you climb 20+. The best crag in the area is Thompson's Point, it offers more climbing in a greater range of grades than any other Nowra crag. This is probably the best crag to visit if you are an intermediate climber. In the 18 to 24 range there is a plethora of really good routes, all well protected and ideal for pushing your grades on.

For the advanced climber there is loads of stuff to do. There are a lot of other crags apart from Thompson's, they are not quite so large and varied. The intermediate climber has to wander about a bit, but there are some real gems to be found. For the harder climber Nowra is a paradise of projects to do. Apart from climbing there is also a lot of bouldering, a lot of hard stuff has been done at areas like Lot 31 and Cheesedale.

All up Nowra is a great place to climb, what it lacks in presence, it makes up for in fun.

Approach:

Three hours south of Sydney. It’s easy to get public transport to Nowra, once you are there many of the crags are in walking distance of each other. If you're staying at one of the parks opposite Thompson's Point it may be to hire a canoe to get across, which saves a long walk.

Where To Stay:

It is possible to bush camp for free, but you want to have found a very secluded spot- climbers' cars have been broken into. The best option is to pay for camping at one of the parks opposite Thompson's Point.

Areas

Map Name Style Climbs Ascents Height Grade Band Topos
1Hospital Rocks Crag Sport,Top Rope 221,44812m
2Thompson's Point Crag Mostly Sport 31918,96115m 21
3The Grotto Cliffline Crag Mostly Sport 2294,48317m
4Bomaderry Creek Crag Sport,Boulder and other styles 2683,39710m 12
5Babylon Areas Crag Sport,Trad and ? 10061217m
6Ben's Walk Crag All Unknown 71714m
7New Nowra - Braidwood Road Crag Mostly Sport 6432,38818m 35
8The Furnace Crag All Boulder 20
9The Brothel Crag All Boulder 20
10The Wire Crag All Boulder 353m 3

Open trips

There are no open trips for this crag

Learn about trips.