Ascents in Warrumbungles

Lives up to the hype! Pulling onto the crux in a total whiteout and 50 km winds was pretty damn memorable

Weather was great. Relaxed introduction to the bungles.

MEGA CLASSIC, what an epic route and such a cool story behind it. Lee's first bungles route and my first time on the spire, how do we start? An eency microdose of acid of course. Walking in was insane, started at 11am all I could do was admire the length of the spire, we met some hikers on the way and got some pics with them . On the approach Lee told me about the mythology behind Prometheus and how he was bound at the top of the spire, where his liver was eaten everyday by an eagle as punishment for giving fire to humanity. This created the awesome story of 2 young boys approaching the spire, hoping to reach the top to free Prometheus.

After finding the start and admiring possible FAs on the way in Lee took off up the first pitch, "FUCK, thats a hard move for a 14" he exclaims. He had linked pitches 1 & 2. Sitting in the chimney slightly right of the nice ledge Lee dropped his ATC to the deck, we stare at it in disbelief as it crashes down against the rocks only to disappear into the bush. "You silly cunt" hahahhahahaha. After rapping down the ATC was found and we could continue on the mission, the flow was there and the 3rd pitch was super cruisy jugs to the base of the big corner, the next pitch was also awesome and I topped out onto the grassy ledge, only to do a bit of bush bashing and then come back down. Lee climbs up, Dylan: "Hey bro I think you have to do that high traverse there", Lee: "WHAT THE FUCK! ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME!" We discussed the line and Lee took the sketchy looking lower traverse, and luckily did not try and go high. We had our mates calling out to us for a little bit, calls of encouragement from the walk in all the way to balor. WOOOOOOOOOO.

I then climbed the imposing chossy corner and finally found a sweet belay. "It's a bit cold but once you get around this arete youll be sweet", Lee climbed on a 45 degree angle and onto the arete "HOLY FUCK ITS A WIND TUNNEL AROUND HERE", stitched up. From the next belay we thought we had 3 pitches left, when I climbed on and found some overhangs I realised we were on the last pitch. We finally topped out at maybe 830pm, wrote in the book, sorted out the rap and made it to camp at 1130pm. Took soem freeze dried meals up the hill, cooked em up, smoked, drank wine and let out a mighty sigh. Climb of the trip.

Noice

Done in two pitches

5 pitches. The crux pitch horn felt looser than a few years ago

Thought this line looked like a cruisy grade 15 ish for a ground up first ascent.... in classic bungles style it proved vastly more involved.... after navigating and cleaning off loads of snappy holds as I went, and huffing and puffing for an age below the crux trying different sequences and pulling all those holds off, I had to take a rest with a stonking pump.

After a sit and a think I was able to get through the cryptic and commiting crux and almost got spat off fighting my way into the final streno moves and finger crack ! Super.

Can't wait to go back and do it when the rock is all solid as it's a super fun and engaging sporty trad route.

A nice day out. We started at 6am and reached the base at about 7:30am. The track off the hiking trail is getting overgrown. I'll link the GPX trail we did without getting lost. We simulclimbed the route in 2 pitches with microtraxions every 30 meters, stopping at the end of pitch 4 to belay my seconder up the 14 crux & reset gear. I took a double rack of cams from 0.2 to 3, 18 alpine draws, and 4 microtraxions. Back at the car by 1pm.

GPX Downloads: https://caltopo.com/m/F8F4H

Been excited about this climb for quite a while! Stunning. Will showed me simul-climbing with micro traxions then simul-rappelling. Finished before midday, 7h7m car to car

FFA. So hard to tell what the grade on Bungles rock will be !! haha

Launched up this as my eye was caught be the the finger crack and corners high up on the second pitch.

On this my 4th trip in the Bungles I felt like I found a little bit of Bungles rock one-ness and was comfy enough to quest up through some appauling rock and dicey moves.

Rick did a steller ground up ascent of the first pitch through some similarly dicely and loose and committing moves.

Highly recommend, very fun climb.

Stuck at the access gate I think a lot of us were debating whether this was worth the hassle. After getting permission from parks, we sent it down the firetrail and had some fun times on the 4wd track chasing the bottom of the mountain and spotting the wildlife along the way. Short scramble to the base and the climbing began. Following the line of least resistance at the start really depends on what you can't seem to resist. Jack went up the sketchy slab, Greg up the exposed right side, and myself up the most vegetated and dirty chimney I've ever seen. This kind of pattern continued for the rest of the ascent, everyone chosing their own adventure in places. There were some extremely exposed sections where the moves were not at all obvious and objectively far above grade 5. But this paid off in sections with some actual great climbing. A proper chimney, twin cracks with bomber hand and foot jams, and slab that you could run up. Topping out felt like you'd cheated death just a little bit and had everyone in brilliant spirits after fighting the southerly winds the whole way.

less than 30 second into the descent Jack does the sharpest 180 I've ever seen: "hold up, I spy a finger crack" to then have us taking turns at the 3m tall ~v2/3 crack boulder of which Yim got the FA and named it "unicorn chaser" The descent was surprisingly chill, we used the fixed rope which was fine. Bush bash to the car and repeat the fun drive out headed to Kaputar.

Encore lap for the boys. A wildlife tour along the backroads of the bumbles to get to the tondy carpark it was! Apparently it was.. i missed all the emus for writing crag logs. After a very welcome skinny dip, we pulled up close to the correct spot and inadvertantly set a trap for will with an upside down, open hommus container which he dumped into the back of the car. Yim and i dived in with wrap-mops and slurped up every dusty lick of it. His boots never been cleaner. Found the right spot eventually and waited for yim to put 1 gaitor on to test it wtf? We finally resorted to bush bashing and eventually sketchy scrambling to find the start of the route as pictured on thecrag but we got there in the end. Then the sketchiness continued all the way up! In perfect quantities.. nothing too bad, constantly thoughtful moves and route finding that involved the 4 of us working together to bumble our way up and eventually pour drivle into another analog logbook. On the way down a ringlock crack caught our attention. Yim beat me to the FA so boulderers of the bumbles might finally have something to do! Good luck getting the pads up there. The way down was much the same as the way up.. spades of traversing whack wet slabs and route finding faff. Eventually greg flopped out the half rope to get down the last bit of the descent. As gay and lighthearted as our late mate eric dark described it in the day. Not as grade 5 though.

Disappointingly smooth sailing to use yims beloved contradicting adjectives. 70min from balor, never lost the path. 2nd pitch was the highlight for me, but things got uncomfy from the rap down the corner. Scrappy gear anchor and a couple moves off the anchor for yim on an rp that did not stand the test of rope drag for even 5 metres, but he glided all the way through the bulge to a ledge, perfectly using the whole rope. Another delighful pitch. From here it was warrumbumbling to the top. Yim decided to change into his hiking shoes at the halfway mark, stumbling up a gr 15 on some smears at one point. 1 little route-finding phoepa for me that cost a couple minutes but honestly you can get from the rap to the top in 3 hours so im not sure how people keep having epics.. the closest we got was accidentally pissing on ourselves at the p6 lunch spot. It was very windy. Benny and daz invited us over to their side of the hut for a fire tonight! Nice to have the invite returned.

Started the day with a heinous bushbash that regrettably didnt need to be done. Found the start before darren and ben arrived but darren still overtook me on belay. He ran out of rope in an inconvenient little groove which made passing him fun "i hate it here". I had yelled out to yim telling him to move left on his pitch to go up the rib as prescribed but doctors orders were neglected and yim chartered his way across some runout face and somehow refound the route. We stopped for lunch on the pith 5 landing where darren later admitted he tried every manipulative conversation techniques to sneak him and ben ahead of us. They didnt need to in the end, yim went way too low on the traverse and started shedding the cliff so ben was able to 'offer to help us by skipping ahead' for the traverse. This pitch was fantastic and yim loudly proclaimed his love for benny for the photo he got from above of yim leading across. A little later on, ben ran into trouble when a peg lead him into a choss field he started knocking rocks and i sought refuge under a massive detached block that he was standing on, while 12m runout diahonally from the corner. Serious sketch levels for abit but most importantly, this allowed me to take the lead again! I belayed on a broken ledge in the corner and shot yim off onto the north face while darren got his boys lost again and making us unpassable. I quested the last 3 pitches with one rope and we were at the top of the spire. I thought the days sandbagging was finally over but i was wrong! Will and greg had earlier rapped the descent (same for vertigo) and told me id be fine to skip the first chains. Didnt make it to the second chains and had to tether to a tree and hang off it. Benny lead us through the traverse off the bottom of the spire.. i dont know how he could continue to be confident in his orienteering skills after the day gone, but he was right this time. The boys had the fire and fireball ready for us back at the hut. A classic day

Will calling yim out on the uq mountain chat for filming a vlog at the top of p4 instead of putting me on belay and holding the train up was a highlight (or a frustrating light at the time). Another highlight (stupid light) was borrowing yims sunscreen at the top of the route while lying down, then applying and then trying to throw it back and throwing it off the cliff! Landed on a ledge 7m down so yim downclimbed on hip belay to get it. Greg placed 2 boat anchors apparently (tri cams the size of my head attached to the beaner by a yellow seat belt). Would have been a mish to lug them to the crag but the harness aesthetic was beyond incredible.

Lazy start today, rambled up the approach which had epic views of the bungles and an incredible view of cornerstone rib which had us pretty chuffed with what we had done the day prior. Greg led the first pitch and overshot the belay slightly, though it wasn't too obvious where the intended belay was meant to be. Entirely in the shade it was like climbing on ice in the wind. I geared up for my lead which I expected to be cut short as we were half way up pitch 2, I instead returned the favour by getting completely off route and completing the entire climb in a ~55m rope stretcher pitch, surprisingly little drag considering. Was epic climbing even though we were completely off route. Wonder how it compares to the real vertigo.

Rap down was entirely in the sun, and doing 30m raps on ropes without a halfway marker isn't so fun when you're layered up in the heat. Accidentally threaded the rope through my atc and didn't realize until Greg was down, Fuck. Pull the rope, throw it, rope utterly tangled in a tree, Fuck. Pull the rope entirely, thread the second rope through, deal with no middle marker faff, free the other rope, scramble home. The ability to watch Jack and Yim summit caucus from the hut was pretty epic. Might've set a record for beta spraying the rap audibly from a kilometer away.

Wish I had more to say about such a mega route, but honestly the day was perfect. Clear sky, supreme conditions, great climbing. Soloed the first few pitches to speed things up, link p5/6 but again mostly soloing on easy ground. The descent was an adventure in itself down the slippery glacier. Mega first day in the bungles.

Beautiful route up and intimidating and inspiring wall. Ridiculous belays with constant exposure for just about every moment of the climb. 5:30 start from Balor Hut, topped out before 3:30 with plenty of daylight left despite stopping for lunch and a couple of snacks. Uber classic.

One of the great walls of Oz, started early, walking from Balor around 5:30 and topping out easily with plenty of daylight around 3:30. Led both the crux pitch and the traverse which were both supurb. After the traverse you feel adrift in a sea of rock. Everything goes around grade 13-15 and is (mostly) protectable so you just quest in the vague direction and take in the position. Climbing is rad!

Awesome day out, getting dive bombed by 3 huge wedge tailed eagles while building an anchor was memorable. No evidence of a nest nearby, they kept gliding around the rest of the day but seemed friendly. The 14 was the money pitch with a sudden helping of exposure and green glacier is a unique descent.

Hiked in and climbed on day 1. Good lil adventure to warm up into the bigger stuff.

Climbing with eagles. left my shoes at camp so did it in approach shoes. Great climbing on pitch 4.