A monster sport route, with great exposed arete climbing on every pitch bar one. If you want to do the full route, rap in via Mirrorball and walk along base of cliff past Bucket Bunny and Hotel California' You can also just climb the last 4 pitches if you rap in down Yesterday's Groove. Equipped on a rainy night, the bolts seemed too far apart in the light of day, thus 4 more were added after the first ascent! If it's been raining avoid this route for at least a few days as a temporary waterfall blows onto the arete at pitch 5. Bring 20 draws, prussics or an ascender, double ropes and enough time!
Start: Starts aprox 100m right of 'Hotel California' below major arete.
15m (21) Little corner then right onto rounded arete. At ledge walk right and step across gap and up short chossy crack to belay under main arete.
17m (25) Bouldery and powerful. 'Monkey' over roof and swing left across lip to gain arete. Up this to comfy belay ledge.
29m (25) Up arete with devious moves for 15m, then traverse right onto face away from arete for several metres, then trend left back onto the arete at flake to finish. Bolts up the arete direct are an open project. Belay in large slot under roof.
25m (23) Thug over roof and up aretes to belay on vegetated slope at DUB.
50m (5) Scramble up hill side to 7m fixed rope. Hand over hand or prussic up this (rope was installed in 2010 - stay roped up and take care!) and continue up vegetated hillside to arrive at base of upper wall.
35m (23) Face to major arete with offset seam on the right side. A pumper! Hanging belay in little cave.
25m (22) Technical arete on small ironstone edges. Hanging bolt belay or link into the next pitch for full value!
18m (22) Up the wall and then left to arete and up to large cave belay. A little bold. You can bail from the end of this pitch by scrambling up the gully to the left (roped).
17m (24) Bouldery. Crawl right through cave and peer around lip to find hanging belay bolt. Re-position belay. Rightwards up face on crimpers, then back left up pumpy wall to easy death by ironstone.
23 Jan 2010 | First ascent: Heath Black, Vanessa Wills, richard sonnerdale, Mikl Law & vanessa peterson |
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Some content has been provided under license from: © Australian Climbing Association Queensland (Creative Commons, Attribution, Share-Alike 2.5 AU)
21, 25, 25, 23, 5, 23, 22, 22, 24 | Assigned grade |
Although sport climbing is well entrenched as the most popular form of Blueys climbing, mixed-climbing on gear and bolts has generally been the rule over the long term. Please try to use available natural gear where possible, and do not bolt cracks or potential trad climbs. If you do the bolts may be removed.
Because of the softness of Blue Mountains sandstone, bolting should only be done by those with a solid knowledge of glue-in equipping. A recent fatality serves as a reminder that this is not an area to experiment with bolting.
If you do need to top rope, please do it through your own gear as the wear on the anchors is both difficult and expensive to maintain.
At many Blue Mountains crags, the somewhat close spacing of routes and prolific horizontal featuring means that it is easy to envisage literally hundreds of trivial linkups. By all means climb these to your hearts content but, unless it is an exceptional case due to some significant objective merit, please generally refrain from writing up linkups. A proliferation of descriptions of trivial linkups would only clutter up the guide and add confusion and will generally not add value to your fellow climbers. (If you still can't resist, consider adding a brief note to the parent route description, rather than cluttering up the guide with a whole new route entry).
If you have benefited from climbing infrastructure in NSW, please consider making a donation towards maintenance costs. The Sydney Rockclimbing Club Rebolting Fund finances the replacement of old bolts on existing climbs and the maintenance of other hardware such as fixed ropes and anchors. The SRC purchases hardware, such as bolts and glue, and distributes them to volunteer rebolters across the state of New South Wales. For more information, including donation details, visit https://sydneyrockies.org.au/rebolting/
It would be appreciated if brushing of holds and minimisation/removal of tick marks becomes part of your climbing routine. Consider bringing a water squirt bottle and mop-up rag to better remove chalk. Only use soft (hair/nylon) bristled brushes, never steel brushes.
The removal of vegetation - both from the cliff bases and the climbs - is not seen as beneficial to aesthetics of the environment nor to our access to it.
Remember, to maintain access our best approach is to 'Respect Native Habitat, Tread Softly and Leave No Trace'. Do not cut flora and keep any tracks and infrastructure as minimal as possible or risk possible closures.
For the latest access related information, or to report something of concern, visit the Australian Climbing Association NSW Blue Mountains page at https://acansw.org.au/blue-mountains/
Overall quality 64 from 6 ratings.
Author(s): Simon Carter
Date: 2019
ISBN: 9780958079082
The latest comprehensive, latest and greatest Blue Mountains Climbing Guide is here and it has more routes than you can poke a clip stick at! 3421 to be exact. You are not going to get bored.
Author(s): Simon Carter
Date: 2019
ISBN: 9780958079075
Simon Carter's "Best of the Blue" is the latest selected climbing guide book for the Blue Mountains and covers 1000 routes and 19 different climbing areas. For all the sport climbers out there, the travellers, or just anyone who doesn't want to lug around the big guide that's more than 3 times the size - cut out the riff-raff and get to the good stuff! This will pretty much cover everything you need!
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