Ascents in Wolgan Valley

I can see why pitch 3 is the legend that the wind sings the songs about. Mega commitment mode needs activation incoherent to some subconscious praying to the Wolganverse. Can be aptly described as an intergalactic voyage hypothetically invoking similar excitement and fear.

But I would like to say a word to two about Pitch The Second. Now Mr.Steven's guidebook doesn't give a grade to The Pitch, only a 'hand' is stamped to it as a reference. Igonarently assuming an easy grade ramble up some loose blocks, I was confronted by some pretty technical stemming on some pretty mobile terrain. Placing gear behind a block that possessed the ability to replicate music of an African drum, subdued trauma pushing me forward, I found myself bear hugging one these blocks holding on to the biggest jug of the entire route. "I think its moving Andy. It definitely moves".

Never in my life I have been so happy to reach a belay station inspite of not having the gear for its perfect rock. "Whatever it is, it won't be as bad as what just happened down low".

"Proposterously good".

PS Apologies to the visiting American climbers we scared away from the top of Pitch 2 as they were about to simultaneously board the jam train of P1. I guess our healthcare is better than theirs and we wouldn't have had to strip them to make it look like a hiking accident.

Well near slid off the cliff clawing my way up the scree slope to the tree anchor.

Everyones favourite nightmare, falling off after topping out

Good climb. First pitch felt hard for the grade. Tim ran pitches 3 & 4 together.

Great to see the upper pitches and well worth doing. Consistently delivers, a real classic. A little warm in full sun. Purple cam eater, had a bit of fun retrieving a nut from the 2nd belay.

Adventure climbing at its finest.

The hike in to the base of Old Baldy is hard, there's so much overgrowth. Download the GPX file to your phone (see Approach)!

We climbed Secret Swinger to get to the ledge, and went around and up the pedestal on the right side (easier scramble). Started the climb by 2.45pm. In hindsight we should've bailed, but the 'fuck it we're here now, we got this' mentality prevailed.

Linked P1+P2 in a sublime long pitch, I loved every bit of it! So. Good! Beautiful jams, and getting over the roof was such a joy.

We slowed down a fair bit on P3 and P4, we were both pretty worn out from an intense weekend of adventure climbing. There's an unprotected offwidth on P4, only for a few moves, but it still got to me. Took a take to mentally prepare for it. Felt really good pushing through eventually. Topped out at 7pm.

Did the two raps back to the ledge, and thanks to GPS and Josephine Roper 's wicked night vision managed to find the Secret Swinger rap point in pitch black. Bush bashed our way back to camp in the shortest shortcut ever, 35min (over a 45min approach in the morning). Back at the car at 9pm (edit: 10pm). Wrecked. What a day. Mostly type 1 fun, the bits in the dark were type 2. A great day out.

What a spectacular climb and position. I don't regret going up, even if it meant topping out at 7pm Earlier start next time though!

Was pretty tired and just aiming to make it up by pulling on things at various points, could definitely do it cleaner, except the little offwidth/face climbing bit near the top of pitch 4, which I found very difficult even after bailing back to the anchor and letting Dick lead it. May have just been exhaustion, not sure.

Discovered that it's really easy to get lost on a route with no bolts or crack to show you the way (in addition to the stupidity of not reading the guidebook instructions).

Ironically, climbed up to the DRBB of P2 but was under the impression that the anchors would be near a small tree and consist of three carrots so I took a hard right and traversed across the slab to the offwidth and slim tree on Mazurka (I am very blind this happens all the time). Tree was way too skinny to belay off so climbed up to a higher tree. This produced a massive zig-zag line held together by terrible pro. Marco's write up is a great reference.

Absolutely awesome climb 3rd pitch is the money but 1st and 2nd also great

First pitch was like climbing on the beach...very nice route but very scary the overhang going out of the cave. Should be a 16 but was the hardest move of the whole line

Such an amazing line! Ran out of gogo juice at the top of pitch 4. Covid sucks!

How to find the climb:

1. From the road shoot for the middle crack on the upper tier, bush bash your heart out.

2. Its a very obvious corner, I don't think I need be more clear than that.

3. Located 10m to the left of a climb marked "TC" probably standing for "Take Care" the Wolgan version.

P1: Stem in abundance and then stem a bit more. The belay in the cave is actually not that bad, save fist sized cams for utilizing the better rock and a thread runner in the choss will keep you happy.

P2/P3: Keep stemming lads, no one asked you to stop. At the top Remember the tree and its GPS coordinates only if you identify as direction illiterate and if you wish to abseil down it after an epic on the holy ground above.

Abseil beta: NO NO NO, two 60m ropes don't get you down on the ground from the Tree. Abseil 20m or so to a good ledge with another suffering (from the hands of climbing civilization) tree. 35m abseil to the ground from here. Kiss the ground thanks if ropes don't get stuck on the way down.

the name doesn't lie

We tried to do "one last climb" on Saturday at 6pm. Lead P1 without much issue. The chimney is pretty poorly protected, and falling would lead to serious injury, but the moves are easy enough, so I made it to the anchor without much issue.

On P2, Nat got off route pretty severely and ended up traversing right, when she was about 2m to the right of the p2 anchor, due to tunnel vision caused by how run out she already was and the onset of darkness, with almost no gear to the tree on top of Mazurka. When I started seconding, now in the dark, I was kind of over it at this point and just wanted to get to the tree to bail, so I decided to french free. The first cam I pulled on blew, and I fell about 8m. After getting back up, when I got to the next pro, I saw that after taking that out, I had about 20m of traversing to do on a slopey slab in the dark, with only 2 pieces of gear, which after blowing a cam already, I did not trust anymore. Too afraid to continue on, I regretted my mistakes leading up to this point and spent a good 30min contemplating how to get out of it. There were no extra placements anywhere near me, just a sandy pocket that had the .4 I was stuck at.

I ended up cleaning up the sandy pocket, I was stuck at, after which it could take an extra .3. I then had myself lowered on the two cams on tag line and top rope, clipping the carrot of Mirrorman back in as extra safety.

Now definitely don't want to make excuses for our poor decision making:

• Don't start a multi at 6pm
• Make sure you leader brings a head torch (we did have them but they were in the second bag)
• If the guidebook states "poorly" protected it probably is.

But I feel like this multi would be more classic if P2 had an extra carrot between the prominent pocket that takes a .3 - .4 cam that I bailed on and the anchor. It would still be an excitingly runout pitch even with the extra carrot. More than happy to pay for this bolt and help placing it.

great absorbing climbing. Deserves a rebolt.

with

wow. apart from the bolts which are not wow...

Climbed a fantastic crack up and right of Cymbeline, hoping it was a new route. Presume it is this route though, as the crack is cleaned and had a cairn at the start.

Brilliant. Barely stuck it out for the onsight with an injured finger.

Serious slab action! Balancy until the finishing jug haul

Great!! but Dr Deep Fryer would have been more appropriate for us in 30 deg heat...what the?

Absolute pearler

p1 only. 3 cruxes in 40m, tough!

P1 - Ugly start into great corner and then fun chimney and nice steep corner above.

P2 - Nice wide corner into pleasant finger crack to a hideous scrubby mantle thrash.

P3 - Thin technical corner

P4 - Scary chossy start into chimney finish.

P5 - To the top.

Well worth doing. Great varied climbing, awesome position. Did it as 2 pitches as a party of 3.