Begehungen in Oceania als Pink point von Paul Frothy Thomson

A great FA, whereby I still had to fight to stick the top moves, despite 5 sessions on this thing (most of them in TRS).

Once you get to the steepness, its all just genuinely fun climbing. The rock quality is wave wall, but longer, and steeper. The main 3 bolts of the crux is just super funky, powerful, tucked-in bouldering over a long sequence, and I just really enjoyed my time on this.

Hope you guys do too.

Fun fact: this is the first time I've projected anything since my accident in September last year!

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

I fell off the start boulder a couple of times till I found the holds. A very cool finale.

Surprisingly sustained thin moves the whole way. I didn't find the sneaky crimp near the top on my onsight attempt.

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.

2nd shot. Exciting send in the summery temps. Glad I didn't attempt the onsight, as that start is diabolical! I think this is borderline X without tricams, but maybe only R with them? Alas, I had no tricams. I loved the oozy, slinky style.

2nd shot. So much fun!!! After seeing all the broken gear on this one, I decided to do an equipping lap, then smashed it second shot. Steep, juggy, intimidating pumpiness through outrageous steep terrain. Im pretty chuffed to say that I reached the anchor completely unpumped

I then downclimbed it to clean it

2nd redpoint attempt, after a TRS rehearsal. Took a huuuuge fall on my first RP attempt. Short and hardly a "line" but cool rock and moves, and crazy sustained for a face climb.

Not a good warmup I flashed pumped on the last move of the traverse on my onsight, took the whip, and broke my cam

2nd shot was a cruiiiiiiiise and just super fun. More intimidating than Kachoong, and more technical for a steep climb, but not much harde grade-wise.

2nd shot. My onsight attempt was an absokute debacle -I just couldn't seem to get my head around it, for some reason.

Then, when I figured my beta, the 2nd lap was kinda cruisy, I didn't get stressed or pumped. Weird?

Objectively, its classic, slippery, burly, steep crack climbing, with a ruthless start.

Totally botched the start sequence and pumped out, then went back to the ground and sent. Probably about gr20 from the first bolt to the top, but the start is gnarly and slippery.

2nd shot. First lap was a bit of a debacle, but my first redpoint burn was a controlled cruise -wasn't even pumped at the top. Super funky grampians-esque start, then a burly and technical crack and arete finale. Steep fun in an exposed position.

2nd shot. Fell off AFTER the upper crux on my onsight due to an amateurish foot-slip on an easy move 2nd shot was a cruise, but DAMN its fun. Really nice rock, cool moves, and not too hard at the grade. This would be a classic anywhere, in my opinion.

5 days of effort to this point.

Pretty chuffed to get both this and Titan done free within the span of a month.

As with Titan, I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do this. I wasn't planning on doing it until next season, but had an unscheduled day, and decided to check it out... and I was immediately hooked on the challenge.

As to the route:

If the rock wasn't choss -even if it was just your run-of-the-mill Blueys Sandstone, I'd call this the single best crack climbing I've been on in the entire world (and I don't think my resume is lacking when it comes to crack climbing) for position, sustainedness, and purity. It would also be a super-duper obvious contender to climb as a giant pitch.

Alas, it is choss, so while I still regard it as classic, that is very much a subjective opinion, and I think prospective repeat ascensionists should really consider whether this will be their cup-of-tea or not.

P1 - is amazingly varied and technical climbing. Personally, I probably found this physically harder than P2 (in that, its more cruxy) and in some ways scarier (due to insecure cruxes). The opening finger-locking is aesthetic and great, and the insecure laybacking through the middle lends itself to complex footwork.

P2 - Looser than P1 for sure (the start of the pitch is horrible!), but quite stacked. This has a lot of hard moves with no super chill rest. I found the last moves to the anchor to be the crux, there there was about 5 sections I could genuinely have fallen off on.

P3 - To be honest, I didn't like this pitch at all. Loose, hard to protect short crack section, followed by a sandy traverse on eroding edges to gain the topout ledge.

Less sandy/chossy than you might expect in some ways... More sandy/chossy than you might expect in others. There's an "unpredictability" to the rock here that most other chossy routes I've climbed don't quite have.

The gear is also pretty good, provided you're smart about where you place, and remember that spreading fall-load over a larger surface area is better than the alternative (read: passive pro, dammit!).

Don't trust the fixed gear, though

5 days of effort in total to put this all together. I pink-pointed the top 2 pitches, and had the first 2m of gear pre-clipped on P3. I broke 4 fixed pegs, and 1 hourglass carrot during this process. I also took 5 falls -one of which was a sideways whip onto an hourglass carrot, that somehow held my fall!

I wanted to climb something hard on Dogface to prove to myself that I could -I've always believed that I could, but the time had come to prove it.

I found this a conflicting experience. I liked the climbing on the crux pitches, and -surprisingly- didn't end up finding the bad rock/gear as terrifying as I expected. However, because every single lap the route gets harder (breakages, holds become sandier, others become more rounded, fixed gear breaks, etc) my whole experience was stressful due to the knowledge that sooner or later it would be too hard for me to climb. I've never really climbed with this type of time-constraint before (wherein, every failed lap is punished by adding .1 of a grade to the pitch).

Interestingly, the bottom 2 pitches are quite moderate, and actually surprisingly good (the rock isn't too bad, the gear is pretty good, and the climbing is fun!). These pitches are probably worth doing in their own right. After that, it gets rather sandy, and kinda hard

P3 had a wildly technical thin stepped corner (on good gear) to start it off (it took me quite a while to figure out the beta), followed by easy, loose, runout rambling.

P4 had a very cool seam-crack crux, followed by interesting, technical, runout slab climbing on deteriorating rock.

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!

6th shot. Took me 4 laps to ever come up with a consistent sequence for the crux. 5th lap I went through the crux, and fell off the first stemming move... 6th lap for the win.

6th shot total, and 4 core-shotting falls at the lower crux.

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.

Originally attempted ground up. Took some falls, but was ultimately stymied by dirt and moss at the lip. Rapped in, cleaned 'er up, and went agsin. Took a huge lead whip right at the end on my 2nd shot, and sent 3rd shot on pre placed gear.

2nd shot. A bit of a rush to beat the arrival of night, especially at the end of a rather intense weekend (and a long first day at Bombo!), hence the cheeky pinkpoint. Super keen to come back for the True send, though.

Amazing, frictionless, technical trad climbing, with fingerslocks, fridge-hugging, face climbing, stemming, and many foot movements for every hand movement. The gear is good, but small, fiddly, and rather spaced towards the end. The finale seemed very bouldery to me.

First lap was figuring out gear, cleaning the vegetation, and sussing the top crux -which definitely required some work, especially after I broke off a key footer.

Maybe 23 to the rest before the crux, with a solid 25 tick when you add the crux into the equation?

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

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.

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).

3 shots. Fell off the last move on my 2nd shot. 3rd day on at Bulla, and I'm feeling proper beat-up now.

Still cleaning up, but the moves are awesome, and this is a way more enjoyable start to Karma Gettin' than Toast is. Steep as all hell, but surprisingly manageable with technique (I found 4 awesome knee-bars ).

Full disclosure: continuing my run of breaking holds off at Bulla on this trip, I actually broke off my anchor clipping hold on the send. D'oh!

Great roof climbing! More sustained than Black Leg Miner, and with a proper demanding finale.

Sent 3rd shot.

Well... sort of: I actually had a silly foot slip while in the anchor clipping position, and pulling up rope for the anchor clip. Um... I mean: victory whip? Right?

Seriously though, if I get a chance some day, I'll improve the style on this one. But for now, I'm content that I met the challenge.

2nd shot. Pretty chuffed with this, as I hadn't actually been able to do any of the 3 hard sequences on my first go, and had to improvise on the fly as I accidentally kept getting higher. Man, I was hanging out below that top crux for like 20 minutes trying to figure it out on the Send!

The rock is a mixed bag, but the moves are great! Steep and varied, and sustained all the way to the anchor clip.

I started from the first bolt. There was a cairn that was knocked over (I think it's to make the start go?) that I couldn't be bothered rebuilding. Has anyone done the start at 26ish without the cairn?

Sweet! Another boulder-problem overcome with trickery. One day I'll grow a muscle or two, but for now... trickery.

2nd shot. On my onsight, I fell off on the last move to the anchors!

Other than the grotty no-hands rest in the middle, this is actually a really fun route. The top roof boulder is greata fun, and super funky.

2nd shot -I found it hard to figure out the line/bolting on the onsight attempt. Could be "very good" with a bit of TLC. The actual moves are pretty cool (and kinda novelty) though it's rather unloved, and the aid move is quite weird. The lower-crux is a pretty wild bit of technical climbing, and the final traverse left to gain the P1 anchor is gripping!

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.

2nd shot. Almost a classic, marred only by the somewhat sandy start -though, it wasn't as chossy as I was expecting, and is much better than Soul Catcher P1. Quite easy at the grade (24?) but committing through the crux, and tricky to read when unchalked. Was a cruise 2nd lap, though.

2nd shot. Best line I climbed at this crag!

My onsight ended at the last bolt, tickling the good fingerlock. With no chalk on this, I felt like I battled hard and improvised well, only to be pipped at the post. But it wasn't for lack of trying, so that's okay

Great rock, super techy moves, and an obvious feature to climb. We belayed from ground level, and had no problems with rope drag or length of fall.

For some reason I decided the obvious hold out left at the top was off-route (on the line next to this), and ignored it. Since when did I contrive climbing? 2nd shot. A really great route with a lot of climbing despite being short. The top boulder is rad!

2nd shot. Almost classic status! Substantially harder than the other routes on this wall -the headwall is proper stacked to the anchor. A great addition on perfect rock. Steeeeeep!

Backlogging. * rolls eyes * . Once again, the "warmup" becomes the day project. Brutal at the grade!

If this went another 5m further up, this would be a proper classic. Despite its short length, there isn't so much as a moment to catch your breath on this intense number!