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Cooper's Crag

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Summary

Named after Cooper the Wonderdog who cheated death soloing the rope traverse.

Description

Cooper's offers a variety of moderate trad climbing as well as some cracking face routes. A little further to trek but worth the effort. With a number of aspects and being a little more out in the valley, it is easy to find a shady spot with a nice breeze.

Access issues inherited from Marchant's Canyon Crags

Please do not mark or cairn the start of the descent from the access fire-trail. The fire-trail is frequently accessed by Joe Public.

Approach

Approach as per Marchant's Canyon. Once in the forest of the amphitheater following the rope traverse, follow the track across and down to the abseil bolts. Affix a 50m rope and abseil down the via ferrata. Clipping the fixed draw is optional. Ensure that you have a suitable device (mini-traxion or equivalent) and gloves for ascent. This via-ferrata is steep and unforgiving so pack light and dont underestimate. Once at the base of the via ferrata, head climbers left to Waylander, and then keep following the track at the base of the crag for a further 5 minutes.

Ethic inherited from Blue Mountains

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/

Tags

Routes

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Grade Route

Beautiful orange corner. First ascent stopped at roof with natural belay immediately right and potential for a longer route on the upper section (which would need cleaning). Currently no anchors for descent so a steep, roped (downwards leading?) climb down to a large ledge with a tree where you can rap approx. 18m to the ground is required to get off.

FFA: Brad Cameron & Ben Sanford, 28 Feb 2016

Start as for Archon and trend right. Quality tricky blunt-flake climbing.

Striking orange face/arete visible from The Pit abseil. Scramble up corner to belay on large terrace. The left line.

One of the finest single pitch face routes at the grade in The Mountains. Stellar. 26/27 - grade still to be confirmed.

FFA: Emil Mandyczewsky, Oct 2016

Easiest sport route at the crag. Starts 2m left of Archon, but down at ground level just left of chimney. Flake start (stem off the back wall or add 4 grades) then up to huge hanging flake. At top of this swing left across face to arete and up this to anchors under little orange rooflet.

FA: Heath Black, 18 Nov 2018

Corner crack 20m further left from Archon with brilliant yellow lichen. With proper sling-fu can be done in one 55m pitch. Abseil from tree at top to anchors of Wizball and then down. 55m rap. Take double cams from 0.4 Camelot to 3 Camelot and double wires. Lots of slings!

FFA: Emil Mandyczewsky & tree jame, Sep 2016

1m left of Cooper's Extra Stout, up featured orange wall.

FFA: Emil Mandyczewsky, Dec 2017

Companion route to Wizball, starting 2m left. Hard start leads to tricky hard slabbing on big holds (?!).

FFA: Emil Mandyczewsky, Dec 2017

Directly around corner from Nifta. Start at base of flake/crack. Some techy and tricky beta through the bottom section, particularly if there is no chalk. Being drawn around right will end in tears.

Start in the middle of the wall below pockets. Unlikely climbing through pockets up to crimpy crux.

FFA: Emil Mandyczewsky, Nov 2016

A series of wicked reaches that require unconventional climbing. Pumpier than it looks.

FFA: Emil Mandyczewsky, Dec 2017

An unlikely trad route following a crack that seems to want to vanish into the face but continues all the way to a natural finish. To access walk quite a way left (facing the cliff) around from the last bolted lines on a fairly clear track. This will take you to a large grey face with an obvious cleaned crack that starts at the ground and goes to a ledge at about 8m.

Start up the wide crack beneath the fern and up to VERY vegetated ledge. From here the climbing gets good and sees you blast up the immaculate finger crack and then truck diagonally rightwards following the crack system that links the series of horizontal breaks to the final wall and seam (very small gear, C3s or tiny X4s). Head up this into the corner and top out onto the nice ledge with the small tree and DBB. Best to bring a second up as cleaning it is painful (but doable).

FFA: Will Vidler & Brad Cameron, 1 Dec 2017

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Selected Guidebooks more Hide

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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