Ascents as alpine by Matthew Robbins

Second time on this lovely ramble. Great to see the gravity-defying rodeo block is still there! Mantling that boulder was still as nerve-wracking and hilarious as last time.

The Governor descent

Accidental but bloody enjoyable FA while trying to do Juggles. All we could think while climbing was "This is a hard af 15!".

Meant to be an easy day out but turned into one hell of an epic. 11 hours on the wall, a benightment, a hair-raising descent and 27 hour push.

Absolutely stellar day out in a wild, wild position. Total mega-classic of a route!

In all, the day took 14 hours camp to camp (Mt Geryon campsite). Each rappel and pitch took longer as a group of three but with perfect weather and some amazing companions, it made for an incredible and unforgettable experience.

We took a leisurely, but efficient, pace throughout the day but the climb could easily be done in far far less than 14 hours, even in a party of 3.

The breakdown of the day:

• 6:30am: Left campsite.
• 7:30am: Finished scree/boulder field scramble and arrived at the base of Mt Geryon south. While working our way to the North Summit, we did a lot of bush bashing and tried to ascend several false summits. Some beta for the approach: when traversing the ridge line towards the North Summit, if at any point you feel the need to rope up or solo, it's a false summit. Keep following the ridge line to the south as the North Summit proper does not require any roped climbing during the approach.
• 10:30am: Finished approach scramble and arrived at rap station on the North Summit. The 50m and 20m abseils are very exposed and off tat.
• 11:30am to 12 noon (approx): Started ascent of Foresight tower.
• 3/3:30pm (approx): Start ascent of south face.
• 6:00pm (approx): Finished the two pitches up the south face and topped out on Mt Geryon South Summit.
• 7:30pm (approx): Reached end of scramble down South Summit and setup a rappel off large chock at end of descent gully. Descent beta says that you can scramble all the way off, however, we couldn't easily locate the final descent and found that the rap was easier/faster.
• 8:30pm: Arrived back at camp.

Gear Beta

• Climbed on double ropes which are essential for the rappels and significantly cut down rope drag.
• Standard rack that included cams from 0.1 BD x4 to 4 C4, nuts and torque nuts.
• Take a PLB; its serious alpine climbing in the wilderness so pretty obvious why.
• Take a compass; it helps immensely navigating your way up to the North Summit.
• We took a 5 metre length of old climbing rope and a single mallion which we used to backup the final rappel at the end of the scramble down the South Summit.; in hindsight we should have taken one mallion each (3 in total) and two more lengths of cord/tape to back up any existing rap points. All existing tat was in reasonable condition (except for final rappel) but do not rely on it to be.
• Lastly, consider taking some bivvy gear just in case the shit hits the fan. We learnt this lesson the hard way on The Acropolis the following day...

Hiked up Mt Barney late Friday night and bivvied near the top, ready to start The Governor on Saturday. As we bivvied in the open, we got soaked by cloud cover and rain overnight; a pretty average experience

We assessed conditions in the morning and ended up pulling the pin on The Governor due to high winds and general wetness. Did SE Ridge instead as a commiseration climb.

Guess we'll have to wait until next season to get the send of The Governor.

Epic epic epic! One of the coolest routes I’ve done!

With a fair bit of frothing/time for photos, Paul and I took approx 3.5 hours car to car.

The first 1400ish metres are pretty straight-forward, more hiking than climbing, but then it kicks into some pretty epic exposure after that! There are some interesting/thoughtful/committing moves over very exposed terrain that less experienced parties may want to consider bringing a rope for.

Felt harder than a 3 in places, maybe more towards the 6-8 grade towards the end of the traverse going by soloing comparisons to Mt Macedon, Tip toe ridge at Arapiles or Freeway in the Flatirons.