Ascents in Lower Blue Mountains by Paul Frothy Thomson

What a journey! Surprise send, after spending the morning on Simmo's route, and only tackling this at the end of the day with a view to sorting out the "send logistics" (with a route this long, steep, and wandery... It's fair to say that it's involved).

There's just so much here to remember, and with it being so steep, you're always on a timer to get it done. Steep, gymnastic, and sometimes quite technical. Would be megaclassic, but the rock is only about as good as Sunny Side Bell, so far from the best the Blueys has to offer. It's almost too hard to sum it up at an experience, even with the copious amounts of hyperbole I can command

2 Full days working the bottom 26/27 arete, and the effort I originally put in to climb Gaze a Gazely Stare (as well as a few repeated laps for fitness and training). On the send, I committed to constant 5m+ runouts to avoid dealing with rope drag.

08 Jan 2011. With Aaron. Absolutely layback classic.Has one manky Carrot Bolt on it, to protect the rest of the pitch you need BD #6 or Big Bros.

08 Jan 2011. Probably one of the better Glenbrook Gorge routes, if it weren't for the horrible Shalebank topout. Makes a great direct start to Annelid Crack.

Second shot on in-situ gear.

If you ignore the faff (read: choss and doddle) to get to the roof, and the fact that the roof itself is comically short, the climbing itself is bloody outrageous -especially given the era of its first ascent.

Rather bouldery roof moves to gain the offwidth, after which the climbing is weird (read: fully-inverted feet-first climbing), but not too hard. The rock itself was surprisingly good for Glenbrook Gorge.

Ground-up FA. An obvious series of linked corner features. P3 is the money -a longer, more exposed, but chossier version of Catch the Wind- though the FA version of P4 (through the roof) is pretty wild on gear. Unfortunately, P2 was a waterfall, so I had to climb the face next to it (which was kind of dangerous) but when dry, the corner should be easier and safer.

Repeat P2 and P3 to free the crack proper on P2. A good crack adventure of the sort you'd find in the Grose.

An absurd line through the roof crack above the start of P4. Roof jams, Heel-toe above head, and some steep cranking on gear. Took me an annoying number of attempts to send.

Still needs to be done placing the gear on lead (its a mission to clean it, and we were racing a storm).

Short and sweet. Nice and clean for a Gorge crack. I only had 1 cam that fit the crack, so I walked it up the entire way.

Done with a Gentleman's Sit. Surprisingly awkward, despite appearances. With a bit more cleaning, this will be good fun.

Climbed in my approach shoes with a few borrowed cams. My plan to not bring climbing gear to enforce my break from climbing seems to have failed. Easily the best rock if the lower blue mountains is at Nortons Basin, and this crack surprised me with its quality. Nice, awkward, well protected crack to a well bolted thin headwall that was hard in beefy shoes.

Just a quick lap while investigating this old crag. Pretty clean easy crack climbing (especially when you consider the copious amounts of moss on everything else nearby). A bit of a laugh.

An after work lap solely for the purpose of marking the top of the cliff on my GPS. Ended up taking about 4-hours car-to-car (we walked back down via the main Mount Portal walking track... which took over an hour in itself), mostly due to my climbing partner coming down with Heat Exhaustion and struggling to stay lucid enough to belay me.

The climb itself is a true alpine adventure. Lots of vertical gardening, loose rock, big run-outs, doddling... But sections of great climbing and awesome rock. And regardless, you can't deny that it's a "prominent line". So, since I'm not the biggest fan of Alpine-style climbing, I'll rate it "good", and regard it as solid gr15 by todays standards.

I enjoyed the various wide/offwidth/chimney sections of this route. Suitably thrutchy for this sort of adventure.

Surely one of the best lines in the Gorge? Even quite wet today (after all the rain) this was really rad -and quite gripping. Though untrafficked and a touch loose (it is Glenbrook Gorge, after all) the rock is generally pretty good, and the route takes the plum line up the proudest part of the raddest wall.

Onsight but for P2, which I'd actually climbed previously as part of another route.

I definitely found committing to the crux on P3 quite intense, as it's not obvious where it goes. All I'd say is: follow the gear.

FFA. Sweet to get this one done despite the crux running with water. Awesome to finally have a small piece of real-estate on a wall that I've been admiring for some 15 years.

Tackles the faces and roofs of Venom Wall (mostly) on gear (though with the odd bolt to keep it sane), with some gripping, old-school climbing and runouts.

A worthy companion route to The Venom, in my opinion.

Probably hard at the grade.

Great rock, and continuous and sustained technical face climbing in an exposed location.

Proper chuffed that this goes almost entirely on gear (only 4 bolts on the FA!) as all of the hard moves are above gear. It feels pretty "out there" to execute gnarly technical trickery over cams.

6 days of effort. The rock is Cosmic-esque quality, and the climbing is amazing, but as an "experience" its more "brutal" than fun IMO.

2 very different pitches.

P1 climbs like a steeper, harder and more sustained version of Kizashi (and is mostly on bolts).

P2 is all about the gritstone-esque insecurity, and is mostly on gear.

P3 is just an exit pitch

Facilitating Simmo's FA of this old-skool modern-day classic.

Beautiful rock, and radical climbing, with lots of rests between tricky moves. As a giant pitch, almost entirely on gear, this is kinda intense (could maybe use an extra bolt or 2?)

Done with a Gentleman's Sit at a no-hands rest to avoid pinching the FA.

Proper cool!

Clean Repeat. Seconding Simmo after the First Ascent. Still bloody great.

5 days of effort -though 4 of those were wasted with an utterly stupid way of climbing the crux.

Crazy crazy steep mixed climbing over the void. Sustained, and absent "ledges" or major breaks... but marred by "Duck-Wall-esque" rock quality (read: average Blueys Rock), so I'm only giving it 2 stars.

Clean repeat for training

First shot today, after having fallen off 44m up the 45m pitch a few weeks ago. Maybe 3 full days of effort in total?

Quite a lot harder than Gaze a Gazely Stare (the boulder is more full-on, the rests are less restful). It's also more committing, IMHO.

Still super-wild steep climbing above gear, though

Cruisy, classic Gorge wandery face climbing, to an absurd finish campusing a frictionless sloper rail below a roof, and a gymastic finale into a major cave system.

Still needs some more cleaning, and some anchors. I had to do some very scary backjumping/downclimbing to clean it.

TRS lap to retrieve my trad gear from this route. Good casual pumping. I'm back up to having 3 racks of gear now! (its been a few months of sparsity with only 1 rack of gear in my posession).

TRS Sussing lap on the bottom pitch, and the cheeky pink-point psuedo-FFA on the top pitch.

Another lap to do it properly -placing all gear on lead.

I had a lot of (scared) fun with this one. Radical gr23ish start through a roof to a ledge. Then 4 hard boulder problems (with big runouts) between gear nests. Two are vertical runouts, 2 are horizontal runouts. Very gritstone-esque as it links features to forge a line.

I almost fell off the final move to the anchor, and had to power-scream to get through it.

Bloody great day out.

Would be classic (in the style) if it were more accessible, but unfortunately the approach is nightmare-fuel, and the rock is only 3.5/5 on a Blueys rock-quality rating scale.

After work in-a-day send by headlamp!

Great rock for the lower mountains, and wiiiiild moves climbing inverted feet in the offwidth. I found the moves to turn the lip and mantle out pretty bouldery at the grade, but maybe I had a silly sequence? Would love to hear beta on it.

I can only think of 3 other offwidths in the greater Blueys that compares in the grade range/style, and this is probably the best.

For some reason I didn't read the description, and only brought 2 x 5's, which was not ideal. I'll be back with the right gear for the red point, cause this puppy is totally worth it!

2 laps on TRS for training. Trying to build some steep fitness again! Despite being bell-quality-rock, I just find this super steep pupper so much fun!

FA. A super cool hard start up steep jugs, and a tricky face on great rock... then easier, but less inspiring climbing to the top.

FA. A "Lowers Mountains Classic" (with all the caveats that statement encompasses).

A climb of many components, but the technical finale is definitely a show stopper. No boring bits, that's for sure.

Short'n'sweet. Went direct through the small roof at the start to gain the line of the bolts (rather than heading out right, and traversing in via the corner).

When climbed this way, it's quite sustained the whole way, with lots of interesting thin moves.

I really enjoyed this, but its probably not for everyone. Went really easily today, so its probably not as hard as I thought it was. A really funky, fun, steep finale with some very weird moves

Repeat. Absolutely cruised this. No way it was ever 23 (not sure what I was thinking?) Awesome technical climbing on weirdly good rock the whole way.

Repeat. Rather stop-start, but the upper moves are my favourite of the crag.

Another lap. Love the upper half steepness.

FA. Some great climbing at the start and once you start turning the cave roof, but the escapability into the choss cave, and the rock surrounding it knocks a start off. Might be hard at the grade? Though the grade is contingent on following the line of the bolts on the good rock, and not straying off into the choss.

Repeat. As I said before, if you stay out of the cave, this is actually quite fun, and the crux is enjoyable.

2 Laps. After a long morning working one of my upper mountains projects, this one felt hard today. Fun enough for what it is.

Clean repeat. Lapping!

22 Sep 2010.

22 Sep 2010.

Repeat. A recon lap to see if I wanted to solo it. Probably the most sustained climb on this wall, and better than I remembered it. The "crux" section with the broken crimp climbs better technically using a double under-cling sequence. Best climb I did all day.

Ugh. Sand.

22 Sep 2010.

22 Sep 2010.

2 laps. Repeat. Pleasant climbing and interesting, long-ish crux. One of the 2 best on this wall.

2 Laps. Nice (but short) climbing, but hideously dirty. An interesting crux move. This is the sort of climb that never actually cleans up, so just endure the dirt or stay off this climb.

In the dark with my approach shoes. Not a bad little doddle. A pleasant beginners climb.

16 Oct 2009.