Ascents in Central Tablelands as trad by Joey Scarr

Traversed in from left.

Siege tactics. I got halfway up on this lead attempt (with many hangs) before giving up. After lowering off, Dean followed and then took over the lead, reaching 75% with a little aid.

With the high point at 75%, I went up again and finished the last 25% by any means necessary: batmans, assisted dynos, pulling on gear, the works. We managed to get both of us to the top and retrieve all of the gear before the sun was completely gone -- success!

Pretty fun and easy climbing overall, though glad I wasn't the one who had to run it out at the top.

Jess's first trad onsight.

Repeat. Still a classic. Glad I can still do it post-lockdown.

Had trouble figuring out the starting moves

Not bad. Streno start first pitch into interesting cave. Really hard to tell if we went the right way on this climb, but we ended up following hangers and carrots up the face to the right.

Lovely corner. Pretty mega for 13. Contender for best 13 in the blueys?

P1 was a repeat. I found P2 quite hard and scary, and bailed off the lead at the bulge crux. After sending Dean up to finish the job, with nightfall impending, I thrutched so hard through the crux that my vision was obscured by auras for the next 10 mins. This made it quite hard to see footholds.

Nice climb. P2&3 mostly carrots. Start of P2 felt hard at the grade.

More fun and interesting than I remembered. Jams in every size from fingers to arm bar.

Amazing, mega classic. P3 is kind of silly though.

Fun!

Nice consistent crack climbing with a sweet squeeze chimney halfway up. For me this gets the same grade as The Eternity.

One hang. I'd like another practice run on this before going for the lead attempt. Good fists and arm-bars in the wide crack, but sequencing them is a little tricky.

Repeat. What a classic route

P1 only since we ran out of time.

Enjoyable climb. Crux is easy enough if you can hand jam.

Rope solo to rescue our stuck ropes after cleaning Gates of Janus on rappel.

This climb is awesome. Easy laybacking/jamming up a beautiful corner crack, with a tricky little rooflet to finish.

You definitely want someone to second this. We made the mistake of trying to clean on rappel from the Gently Mine chains; 0/10 would not recommend.

Teaching Jess how to trad climb. This is a really good first lead for the trad beginner.

Cleaning/inspecting Jess's placements on her first lead.

Felt pretty run out on P1 (though easy). Nice belay spot in the eyrie.

Classic corner crack. Doesn't get much better than this.

Took a rest in the chimney on P1 after taking too long to figure out the sequence.

Great jams on the first half of this route. Perfect corner crack.

Great climb. Start is a little hard, one or two moves of modern grade 18 IMO and the rest is a fun romp. The cave is awesome.

The climbing itself is fine, with decent breaks for cams. The fixed gear is a bit of a worry though. No visible epoxy on the 4 carrots and I wasn't game to rap/lower off the single rusty quicklink on the anchor.

Felt much easier this time!

Harder than Eternity IMO. Not sure why this is graded 17 now. Had to take two rests due to hands being too spoogey

Hard!

TR'd this to put up a photo line for Janicepts. On toprope it seemed much easier to climb the arete/face instead of the offwidth! Would be run out on lead though.

Great climb, didn't feel confident pulling the mini-roof at the top so took a rest.

Looks fun from the ground, but isn't. Sandy and loose. Tell your belayer not to stand directly under the route, because there will be many falling rocks. Try not to dislodge the big death block at the top.

Traverse left to rap anchors to finish. I climbed the choss pile and rappelled off a tree instead. Not recommended.

Fun and challenging. Good pro.

very bushy

P1 only. Hard but fun. My first grade 19 trad lead.