This guide’s a cracker

As one of the true believers and a Tasmanian living in Sydney, I couldn’t part with my hard-earned cash fast enough when I heard that a definitive Ben Lomond guide was in the works.

In December last year Gerry Narkowicz announced that he and Bob McMahon intended to produce the definitive guide to what is arguably Australia’s finest crack-climbing destination, the Ben Lomond plateau, near Launceston, in Northern Tasmania.

Advance purchases were called for to help bankroll the project. A handful of people answered the call, including myself and the Sydney Rock Climbing Club, which contributed $2000 to the project from the guidebook fund.

Over a year later – on November 3 – MEMORY OF A JOURNEY: Rock Climbing on Ben Lomond (Climb Tasmania Incorporated) finally arrived in my mailbox.

It was well worth the wait.

Like past works by the McMahon/Narkowicz combination, this is a thorough guide to one of Tassie's great climbing areas. In this case it’s the soaring dolerite cliffs of the Ben.

The book is well illustrated with photo-topos and inspirational pics of climbing - yes, including of the guide book’s two authors.

This last point has been used in the past as a criticism of the duo’s guides, quite harshly I think. Unlike many “mainland” crags, Tassie crags are not usually swarming with climbers – save perhaps Coles Bay and sections of Mt Wellington. This is also true of Ben Lomond, which means that there is going to be a shortage of quality pics, unless they’re taken by and of the authors who’ve spent more time there than just about anyone.

Consider this: McMahon was on the first ascent team of 221 of Ben Lomond’s 350 routes and Narkowicz contributed 75 routes.

For the mainlander (such as I now am) there is a helpful list of "immortals" or the best climbs at each grade at every Ben Lomond crag.

There is also a handy precis of climbs and their grades at each individual crag and a three-star grading system.

The book also has a lot of non-guide book stuff and includes an evocative and highly entertaining section – chiefly by Bob McMahon - about the people behind the development of Ben Lomond’s individual climbing areas.

McMahon’s writing style is engaging and conversational. Even the deliberately stream-of-consciousness Who Did the First Climb on Ben Lomond? is a lot of fun, albeit an exhausting read, but then it is subtitled Stumbling on the Threshold of Memory.

Elsewhere McMahon paints with words:

“Full of delight, I want to say, this blue sky, these rocks, this mountainside, this stream, this dead twig, this white lichen, this yellow lichen, this black lichen – but there is no end to it, this naming of things in an effort to make the present graspable, complete, to exclude from one’s existence past and future, nostalgia or desire. And one may get stuck in the past by trying to hold onto the present. That’s the paradox. The present is continual, unfolding, despite the illusion of stasis one comes across on crystal mornings”.

And then there are the images of all those glorious soaring cracklines which are a sort of poetry in themselves...

- ROD SMITH

Tick, tick ...

IF you’re going to the Sydney Rockclimbing Club's Wolgan Valley Sheep Roast and Reunion on October 25 and 26 you’ll need something to climb. Here’s a Wolgan tick list for bumblies of modest abilities but with buckets of enthusiasm ... just like ROD SMITH .

This tick list is based on numerous visits to the mighty Wolgan. All visits have started in a similar fashion – lofty plans to climb the classic multi-pitch routes on the towering Upper Baldy Cliff.

However, for some reason, whether it’s a hangover, heat/cold/wind or the coward-reflex response from repeated viewings of Upper Baldy’s lofty scariness, the climbing has ended up on the lower heights.

This is not to be denigrated, however, the following grab bag of climbs have yielded immense amounts of fun. All should be read with reference to Wade Stevens’ Wolgan bible Wolgan Valley Selected Climbing Areas.

Coke Ovens Cliff Lower

The Wars of the Roses (16) (P1 only) 22m. An excellent trad outing. Corner crack to slab. Rap off. BYO tat.

Organ Grinder (14) (P1 only) 27m. A stunning line up a big offwidth, but with plenty of gear inside the crack.

Deathbed Confessions (13) 60m. Two-pitches. Gear and bolts. Well protected. Same rap as DTB.

Dan the Bulldog (17) 60m. Two excellent pitches. Some consider the first run out. Bolts and gear.

Grunter (16) 51m. Two excellent pitches of trad corner climbing.

Sap (15) (P1 only) 27m. A trad pleasure. Rap off tree.

Coal Mines Cliff

Absolutely Sweet Marie (14) 53 m. Some whinge about it because it has a jamBing start. It’s a classic.

Monitor Madness (18) 50m. One of the most beautiful arêtes anywhere. Plenty of bolts but it also needs some gear.

Conspiracy (16) 45m. A brilliant line. Do the first pitch only for a 35m fest of well-protected offwidth. It’s like a grown-up’s Cave Climb at Narrow Neck.

Hellzapoppin (17) 45m. Brilliant. One long pitch. Bolts and gear.

Old Baldy Lower

The Pulpit (8) 39m. Old school. Safe enough despite climbs around this grade usually being horror shows.


Secret Swinger (16) (P1 and P2 only) 45m. Pure trad. I’ve done it three times ... BYO rap slings.

Room to Move (16) (P1 only) 45m. Tough start then pure jam crack. Heathens layback it. BYO rap slings.

Zoro’s Toaster (17) 70m. Sport climb.

Zarathustra (15) (P1 only) 40m. Lovely trad corner.

At the Barber shop

By Rod Smith

In 1973 Henry Barber amazed the climbing world when he free-soloed the 1000ft Steck-Salathe route on the towering granite of El Capitan.

Late last year, 34 years later, Henry Barber placed three pieces of gear while leading the 15m-high sandstone route Crack of Dawn at Sydney’s modest suburban Barrenjoey crag.

For a star-struck bumbly like myself, it was a jarring contrast between the “Hot” Henry whose legendary first visit to Australian in 1975 revolutionised free climbing and the now 54-year-old legend who was gleefully leading such an unimportant route.

As he carefully made his way up the modest crack and slab I wondered if Barber remained relevant in a climbing world now splintered into distinct disciplines and obsessed by number grades he could never aspire to.

Here in Australia to deliver a “greatest hits” slideshow of his climbing life, as much as to visit the life-long friends he’d made in 1975 and his last visit in 2000, Henry showed – during that all-too short day together – that he is the spirit of climbing and when we he speaks we should all listen.

Q: Why did you come to Australia in 1975?

A; “I came here really to hook up with Rick White and Keith Bell. I did the Nose (of El Capitan) with Keith Bell in 1973 but I climbed more with Rick White.
“When I came here I knew four things:
I knew about the Blue Mountains;
I knew about Frog (Buttress);
I knew about Frenchman’s Cap;
I knew about Ball’s Pyramid.”

Q: Just how frenetic was that visit?

A: “In 1975 I climbed 41 of the 42 days that I was here. I climbed in six of the eight (sic) States, in 27 areas on 100 routes. Of those routes 67 to 72 were first ascents or first free ascents.”

Q: So when did the local climbers start to take notice?

A: “After climbing Integral Crack (20) at Booroomba we went off and we did (the FFA) of Soolaimon 22. When I did Soolaimon I wasn’t sure that anyone would be able to follow me. I only put in two or three pieces of gear in all the way to the roof.
“That was kind of the start of the big blow-up attention to my style.
“I was climbing on a very small 9mm rope and I had a very light rack. My rack today is the same as it was 30 years ago.
“That’s kind of what started the chatter.”

Q: Of all the climbs that you did in Australia in 1975, which was the most memorable?

A: “Manic Depressive (24) (Grampians), even though I failed to climb it, that was my proudest moment.
“I had to put the little wires on the bolt studs. After a time I fell. I pulled the rope. I was climbing with Matt Taylor and he was jumaring with me and I thought this is not right.
“There’s a thing called the brotherhood of the rope. I thought, is this about having a day out with your mates or is this about me knocking off two harder grades?
“I thought I’d already done a 24 (Insomnia) at Frog Buttress although that’s since been downgraded.”

Q: What is it about climbing that has kept you motivated and doing it for 40 years?

A: “I’ve always been enthused. The short answer is that I’m a sick puppy.
“When I sink my teeth into something nothing can stop me. I have a few other passions but nothing has ever held me like climbing.
“I’ve never really drifted away from climbing. To me drifting away means climbing only 70 or 80 days a year. Now I’m climbing about 120 days a year.
“Climbing is really about struggle. If you don’t really embrace the struggle what the hell are you doing it for? It’s soul destroying. It’s soulless.
“Why I love climbing so much: you’re not entitled, it’s not a sure thing.
“That’s why I came to Australia, that’s why I climbed on grit in Britain, that’s why I climbed without shoes in Dresden (Germany).
“If you don’t focus on why you climb you’ll be seen more, if you do focus on (what you want to get out of climbing) you’ll be seen less.
“I was looking more and more to applying the mental side to climbing.”

Q: What was your work-rate like at the height of your climbing powers?

A: “Well I was working a sales rep for Chouinard but my climbing lifestyle was like that of a professional climber: I was climbing 320-350 days a year, the other 15 days were breaks or Christmas holidays.”

Q: What is your climbing philosophy?

A: “Do what you want, want what you do.
“By that I mean there are certain kinds of people who want to be on a really scary climb in a really scary storm and a scary situation. Then there are certain people who don’t: they get there and they don’t want to be there.
“I think a lot of people do stuff (like climb) because it’s a trend or it’s in vogue or they want to get to the top of the climb or if it’s business they want to be the CEO
“They’re all the wrong reasons.
“Between 1953 and 2006 there were 500 people who climbed Everest. (In 2007) 500 people climbed it in one year alone. It is special anymore just because it’s the highest mountain?”


Q: You have always been known for you clean-climbing, ground-up, trad ethics. What was it like for you during the 1980s sport-climbing boom?

A: “I was really depressed. The climbs looked spectacular and everything … so and so flashed 5.12 or 24 yet I was doing 5.12b barefoot years earlier.
“I didn’t think (US sport climbers) were making any headway - compared with gritstone or the climbing in Dresden- until the grades got to around 27.
“I thought it was bullshit and climbers were being expedient with their routes and not leaving things for future generations.
“So from 1980-87 I worked my ass off (with my business) and got my shoulders fixed. They were both dislocating badly.
“Since the mid-90s I’ve been able to climb pretty much as I want.”
“When I turned 50 I climbed in 11 countries.’’

As we headed back to Sydney, I asked Barber if he’d ever met one of Australia’s legendary hard men, Bryden Allen.

Despite having climbed Allen’s Lieben (17) in the Warrumbungles – “That’s a big-feel climb. I wouldn’t say that was one of the easiest routes I did in Australia” – he’d never met the man.

I told Barber that an accident in recent years had left Bryden wheelchair-bound but that he was still a member of the Sydney Rockclimbing Club and regularly belayed climbers at the climbing gym.

“That’s the coolest thing that I’ve heard in years,’’ Barber said.
“That’s what I want to know. That gives me energy to go for another 40 years of climbing.”

Multi-pitch madness ... or Knocking on Stephen's door

By Rod Smith

It was near midnight when we knocked on the door of Stephen Brown's house at the foot of Mt Roland, in North-West Tasmania.

As buggered as we were from the long day, Rick Fielding and I were keen to share a celebratory drink with the bloke who'd put up the route we'd just been climbing for nine hours.

Shaking off sleep as he answered the door, Stephen ushered us inside, proffering beer and soft seats to collapse into.

As the beer, to quote Henry Lawson, made us feel the way you ought to feel without beer, we talked about the 350m route that Stephen and some mates had established just over 30 years before on Rysavy Ridge.

We’d introduced ourselves to him that morning on the way up the hill. Discussing the weather, which was cold and windy, Brown had concluded “You’re set like jelly,”. A comment that ensured that conditions that we considered possibly too cold, suddenly became ideal.

Brown said he’d been monitoring our progress through his binoculars.
"You didn't go the easy way, I'll tell you that,'' he said.
“I’ve been that way myself and it isn’t 11 or 12 or whatever grade they’ve given Rysavy.”

We knew that much. As Rick had grunted his way up the steep pitch 4 and I’d tip-toed my way up the delicate, cracked face of the 60m pitch 5, we were fully aware that we were technically off route.

The Rysavy Ridge route description is spare and simply says: “the climb is fairly straight forward, generally following the line of least resistance up the ridge … ”.

For the first three pitches we found that the line of least resistance meant keeping to the left.



Our decision to not keep left happened after we had a near-synchronised need to take a crap half-way through pitch 4. After we returned to the hastily discarded gear, from opposite ends of the big ledge, we examined where the next pitch went, and felt uninspired. Then we examined the wall to the right.

That pitch and the next, arguably, pumped the grade of the route to up around the grade 17+ mark but in doing so provided the best climbing of the day. At the time we even thought we might be onsighting some new variant pitches. It was not to be.

After “line of least resistance up the ridge” the rest of the Rysavy route description says: “ … unless you want to make your own, harder variation (which many have, sometimes inadvertently)”. Then Stephen confirmed he’d been there before.

We'd begun the route at 8.30am. Despite being early February and technically summer, it was cold and windy enough for us to climb in thermals and windshells. As I led up into the unknown, buffeted by the strong winds, I had a knot in my stomach: situation normal for me on multi-pitch routes.

I ran the first pitch out the full 60m of our double ropes – as we’d decided we would do where possible – before bringing Rick up.

Pitch 2 added a bit of spice as it wandered upwards to a head wall cracked by an off-width. I shivered as Rick made his way up through a fairly mixed pitch before tackling the short off-width. Settled on a big ledge, he quickly brought me to the top.

It was at this time that our friends John and Marian Shaw decided to call off their climb of the ridge. Starting behind us, Marian had led the first pitch only to slip on the damp lichen. Scraped and cold, the pair set up a windbreak and tried to warm up before deciding that retreat was the better part of valour.

Rick and I felt bad for the Shaws who were very keen to do the route. John, however, decided that there was still plenty to be done and for the next 10 hours acted as a sort of base camp, calling us up on our walkie-talkies and checking our progress. On the walk back to camp, he guided us down the twisting, ankle-breaking track which he’d re-marked, on the way up to meet us, with reflective tape.

But before we could be guided down we had to climb the thing...

Pitch 3 was broken into two: the first a short pitch to a corner in which I found a fixed wire (which I left). We then moved the belay around the corner on the left side of the ridge to an off-width corner.

After moving up the corner 10m I decided to strike out right onto a overhanging, juggy headwall. Why? I dunno. I blame it on reading three different accounts of the climb which included the words "juggy wall".

Freaked out by a hex that had someone levitated and followed me up the overhang – leaving me gear-free for a considerable way – I decided to head back to the crack. This decision included hanging off a precarious-looking flake with a pebble embedded in the top and ensured that I created one of my best ever Z-drag scenarios, despite the double ropes.

With some difficulty I topped out on a pinnacle in a comfy bower and brought up Rick. As it happened it was also the same place where the overhanging headwall would have topped out, had I stuck to the line.

Rick struck off on the fourth pitch, for about five minutes: that’s how long it took for him to gain the big, shrub-lined, aforementioned ledge where we downed tools for a synchronised bowel movement.

On the ledge were two, small wrist-sized or smaller shrubs with white slings around the bases. It appeared that someone had bailed from the ledge down into the ridge's descent gully. It's the same gully - after three hours of tangled-rope abseils off tiny trees and muddy bum-sliding in the darkness - that I would come to think of a small slice of hell lodged in the Tasmanian wilderness.

Back in character on the ledge – pants on, harnesses cinched – we examined the left-hand side of the ridge for the next part of pitch 4, only to be repelled by the sight of the scrubby corner.

Then the blunt, juggy looking arête on the right caught our eyes. I instantly thought: "It’s Rick’s lead, sucker". Then I thought: "A variant, a variant, ring the bells, let’s steal some history". Rick agreed with the second thought.

It seemed to take ages for him to climb the arête. When it was finally time for me to follow I soon discovered why. Sloping, vertical and not as hold-riddled as it looked, it was a tough pitch.



A rightwards traverse was all that was left between Rick and I, but it was on slopey ground with stuff-all gear and plenty of falling-into-the-abyss potential.

From a distance Rick looked to be seated in a comfy, corner belay. When I got there I found he was belayed in a bottomless corner with no room for me. I momentarily wished we’d taken the less-exciting option above poo ledge.

To begin pitch 5 required a tenuous tip-toe around Rick to gain the wall. That somehow achieved, I eyed the delicate flakes of rock that I were between me and a factor 2 fall. Possibly whimpering, I gingerly scaled the flake before slamming a skin-tearing fist-jam into the lovely crack above. Feeling more secure I looked up and up and up. The pitch appeared to be at least 60m. With our stripped down rack – for luggage weight reasons – I noted that I’d have to be a bit careful with gear.

Another guidebook phrase “delicate cracks” screamed at me as I negotiated the pitch which involved swapping from one crack to the next, ruthlessly ripping out with one hand a small bush, while barely holding on with the other, and banshee-like screaming of the word “below” after accidentally dropping a football-sized brain-bomb Rick’s way.

By the time I topped out there was little rope left and only three pieces with which to make a belay. I was exhilarated, or knackered, I can’t remember which.

Rick wandered up oblivious to the drama I’d undergone for the past hour, in much the same way as I suspect pitch 4 had been for him.




With gear swapped, Rick led off on pitch 6, stretching the rope out the full 60m amid a varied pitch of small buttresses, unprotected mini-overhangs, culminating on a three-point belay on a tiny tea-tree that was clinging miserably to the rock.

Pitch 7 was a long, easy and scrappy affair. It began nicely enough, with another near vertical wall whose cracks provided secure gear placements. After a short portage to the next belay, I brought Rick up to defeat the rope drag. Then I continued the route up a short chimney, before again bringing up Rick. Still calling it pitch 7, I led on up a scrubby ridge just shy of the climb’s highpoint: once again rope drag had dictated the pitch length.

It was Rick’s good fortune to reach the highpoint before leading across the knife-blade ridge that connected our route to the rest of the mountain. With massive drops either side it was a spectacular pitch.

Pitch 9 was mine. After a wider section, the ridge once again returned to a cheval. As I traversed, I noticed just how late it was getting: 7pm by my scratched and nicked watch. This realisation suddenly made me cold and hungry. I stopped and made a belay. Just beyond the ridge narrowed even further: two maddeningly exposed rock steps with massive exposure either side before the ground widened and became the head of the descent gully. It was an easy decision. I radioed Rick: “Mate, I don’t want to do this bit, it’s your pitch”.

Youth came skipping along the ledge, barely stopping to rerack, before nonchalantly negotiating the narrow step and finishing the climb: a nice, even 10th pitch.

I quickly followed Rick and we wandered down to the descent gully. A microwave oven-sized chockstone, festooned with a motley rainbow collection of slings and cord, ominously marked the first abseil.

With darkness now falling I threw our doubles off the chockstone anchor into the even darker gully. Then I rapped off, all the while hoping that the chockstone wouldn’t beat me to the bottom. It held.

For the next three hours we battled darkness, tangled ropes and rap points that were mostly no more than collections of tiny trees lassoed together by tat, to abseil and slide by torchlight back to the base of the climb. From there our most excellent mate John guided us back to Stephen’s hearth.

Suburban cragging: Mt Alexandra.

In this first in an occasional series on suburban cragging around Sydney, ROD SMITH looks at a crag that is technically not even suburban…

If you’re tired of dodging the Saturday morning sport-mums convoy of people-movers and Toorak tractors (flash 4WDs), on your stop-light-ridden way to Barrenjoey or Narrabeen Slabs, then the Southern Highlands crag of Mt Alexandra is for you.

Instead of schlepping at a snail’s pace up the Wakehurst Parkway, or over Spit Bridge, you could be barrelling at 110 km/h down the M5, headed for the Southern Highlands town of Mittagong.

It’s here, just a little over 70 minutes’ drive from Sydney that you’ll find Mt Alexandra. Despite being about 100km from the CBD, or twice the distance as Barrenjoey, Narrabeen or Berowra, the travelling time to Mt Alex is as fast and often faster.

A largish north-facing crag, it is mostly comprised of sport climbs, with a few mixed and trad lines thrown in. www.thecrag.com lists more than 80 climbs while Peter Monks’ Sun, Surf and Sandstone online guide (www.sydneyclimbing.com) has descriptions for more than 70 routes.

The rock is sandstone, generally slabby in nature, with excellent friction. It’s a great crag to practice your footwork on as many of the moderate-grade climbs require some degree of smearing.

The grades range from 8 to 27 but it should be noted that some routes in the easiest grades are solo-only, non-protectable outings, which means death-route status for most of us.

Regardless of this, there are plenty of moderate grades and shiny bolts to satisfy the most demanding of climbers for quite a few visits.

Top of the tick list in the easy grades would be the traditional warm-up routes B (15), Open to Public Scrutiny (14) and In the Inn of the Sixth Happiness (13). Each of these climbs is located in the Central Area.

The nearby adjacent Vox Populi area has some good moderate-grade sport climbs including Dorothy the Dinosaur (17) Red Room (18), Vox Populi (18) and Mousetrap (19).

On a recent visited it was noted that this popular wall has also sprouted three more bolted routes, according to thecrag.com: Hugh Town (19), Vox Fox (16) and Silver Fox (20).

But the pick of this wall would have to be Dorothy the Dinosaur followed by the omninous-looking roofed Vox Populi ,which is really a jug-fest with the crux lower down and needing wires to protect it.

The attractive curving corner crack Michael in Shorts (16) also provides some sweaty good times, but would appear to be slightly undergraded, due to the hard move needed to gain the climb's sole bolt - after you’ve negotiated the crux.

For those climbers interested in some serious cranking, it should be noted that one of the developers of this crag has been Garth Miller. His routes include Ultine Demence (27) and The Big Day Out (24). But he also contributed the aforementioned Open to Public Scrutiny.

Other important features of the crag include its close proximity to two pubs and a bakery that serves good coffee. In case of rain it’s also close to the bookshops of Bowral.

Of course if you got to Bowral you’ll have plenty of Toorak tractors to avoid.

A giant climbs among us ...

"Hot" Henry Barber is visiting Australia at the moment, giving slide shows all over the country including Thursday, November 15, 2007, at the Bowler's Club in York St, Sydney. Tickets are $15.

The show is presented by the Sydney Rockclimbing Club and Mountain Equipment. Tickets are available at the door on the night.

Not sure who Henry is? Put it this way Rock and Ice magazine listed him among the 10 legends of the sport.

In 1975 Barber came to Australia and climbing was never the same again.

By the time “Hot” Henry he left six weeks later, he had climbed 29 cliffs in six different states and the Australian free climbing grade had been lifted to 23.

His ticks included the first free ascents of Cock Corner, 21, at Frog Buttress, and the Arapiles classics Kachoong, 21, Kama Sutra, 23, including his virtual solo of Thunder Crack, 20.

His first ascents included Insomia, 22, at Frog Buttress, Reaper, 22 at Mt Arapiles and Daedalus, 20, on Hobart’s the Organ Pipes.

More than 30 years later and Henry is still living the climbing life.

The Endless (K)not

Hey, WAKE UP!

Has everyone gone SOFT and taken up GOLF?

What happened to the HEADY MIX of CLIMBING and GIBBERISH with which we used to block one another's emails.

The STABBING fingers on MAPS and in GUIDEBOOKS in pubs on tables AWASH with BEER.

Where are those PLANS for EPIC CLIMBS and days of BEER and BULLSHIT?

All the BIG days that we PLANNED for, during those mean, little days of work and winter.

This time last year we were EXCITED and CRAZY.

We were TRAINING and PLANNING and TRAINING and TALKING about an OBJECTIVE: A BIG SCARY, DREAM OF AN ADVENTURE.

Now we're quiet and absent and not climbing much and selling stuff and child-rearing and busy and busy and busy and melting away ....

Now there is silence -------------------------------------------- on the line.

Where has all the LOVE gone?

I had EXISTENTIAL ANGST but thankfully the ENNUI has kicked in.

Routes less travelled

DVD REVIEW: First Ascent (Sender Films)

By ROD SMITH

The quality of US director Peter Mortimer’s last climbing film was such that it virtually was the travelling 2005 Banff Film Festival.

Who could forget the beauty of Indian Creek as showcased in Parallelojams or the cuteness of the climbing Jack Russell dogs?

As a result the expectations for Mortimer’s new film First Ascent (Sender Films) were high. And so far repeated viewings of this 95-minute world-spanning feature have fulfilled those expectations.

With its self-explanatory title, the film sets out to document a variety of wild and impressive new routes.

They include the terrifying trad zone of Colorado’s crumbling Black Canyon – including the aftermath of a massive leader fall – as showcased by Jared Ogden and Topher Donahue.

Then there’s Swiss crack ace Didier Berthod’s amazing effort on “Europe’s hardest crack” Greenspit, as well as his determined efforts on the Canadian supercrack the Cobra. In the case of the latter it is one of the few non-first ascent, with Didier beaten to the ascent through a combination of injury and the equally determined efforts of the Canadian climber Sonnie Trotter.

The best of the bunch, however, would have to include the manic energy of Cedar Wright and Ivo Ninov as they work their project Cosa Nostra. Entitled The Obscurist, this part of the film might be set in Yosemite, but as the title indicates it’s about Wright and Ninov working an obscure line. This is not about a new towering, multi-pitch route, but a grunty, maddening roof crack. Gnarly stuff, dude.

For elegance and sheer daring the best of the lot is Dean Potter’s attempt on The Tombstone. This thin, long and strenuous dihedral in Moab, Utah showcases Potter’s superlative climbing style and his willingness to fall long distances on small gear. He even eschews the protection of large cam – and so is forced to run out the top of the climb – to help ensure he makes the first free ascent.

Less necessary, but certainly fashionable and entertaining, is the section on German wunderkind climber David Lama and his pals deepwater-soloing in Thailand and taking some big falls.

For Timmy O’Neill fans the weird, hairy guy is back this time soloing buildings in LA and trying to sell the concept as a TV show called Urban Ape to a bunch of bemused producer types.

Overall there’s enough climbing here to keep anyone satisfied. The camera work is, as always, superb and the soundtrack will have you seeking out the tunes that accompany the visuals.

The call of the wild

By Rod Smith

AS a new climber I want to know if I have to sell my car so that I can be like all the other climbers that I hang around with.

None of them have transport which I put down to their heightened sense of environmental awareness, especially when we go to wilderness crags like Earlwood, Berowra and the Sydney Harbour Bridge pylons.

Having six climbers hanging out of my Datsun 200B is not 100 per cent safe for humans – although many wear their Petzl brain buckets on the way – but it certainly is better for the environment.

I’m willing to sell my car for a number 10 hex.

While it will be inconvenient not having a car it will also lessen the embarrassment of being the only climber I know who owns a car and knows how to drive an automatic transmission.

With no car I can clear my head of all the mechanical knowledge I have and replace it with important climbing learning, like how to sling a chickenhead and why it’s better to thruch up a grade 8 death chimney with no protection than lead a bolted grade 14.

What I hope is that lots more bumblies appear on the horizon to take up the slack in the system by letting me bum a ride.

The only real disadvantage I can see in not having a car is the safety factor. My last emergency-climbing epic was at the climbing gym when I was benighted on a green climb.

Luckily I had the car and next morning could drive to the nearest McDonald's for breakfast. If I'd had to catch a bus I would surely have died on the spot from starvation.

After I sell my car I plan to make two more important changes so that I am a more environmentally conscious climber like my friends.

1. Never offer to buy a shout at the bar.

2. Get together with three others and buy a coffee and then sit around it for two hours.

Now that I read back those two aims look more economically conscious. Maybe I’ll stop buying deodorant, which is both economically and environmentally conscious.

By the way my name is Billy and I have been climbing for five minutes.

I've already put up six routes - four of them are unclaimed staircase climbs; one was the monkey bars at my old primary school and the other was the first recorded ascent of a ladder on a bunk bed display in the Ikea shop.

I’m on the lookout for climbing partners. Beginners are OK, especially if they own transport, like a Vespa or a pair of rollerblades.

Overheard imagination ...

Are you a god Christopher? I am. I feel it every hour that I’m out here. When we’re so far from the soup, doing this, caught up in it, I imagine it’s how God feels.

It takes me two days to get over this. Every Monday I am in a black hole. I feel the ordinariness of it all. The quotidian shitfight that I’m supposed to live for the next 40 years.

The tie and collar existence, the dinner on a lap, too tired to fuck or frolic miasma.

That’s why you can’t die on me cobber. This stuff is ours. It’s what we do together. Our enthusiasm is equal. Our dedication would shame so-called athletes. Our bravery is worth a Victoria Cross. I am afraid of nothing except the situations in which we put ourselves every week and we do that for fun. It defines me.

What we are is not back in Sydney, it does not live in the moments that we are with the girls.

What I am is here, now. It is the 12 hours on a Saturday, the three hours at the gym once or twice a week and the minutes and hours that I surf the net or read books that feed this obsession.

My identity, my very life has become indivisible from you, the rock, the wilderness, the aluminium, the nylon, the adrenalin, the fear. The fear.

Hell and high water

By Rod Smith

It was the most twisted of nightmares.

It began with my shouted name. Ripped into wakefulness, I felt the tent floor moving, like some sort of beast, beneath my sleeping bag.

I couldn’t focus my eyes and a rushing sound filled my ears. A light came on and a stern face appeared.

I tried to put on my eyeglasses but they crumbled, broken in my hand. I found my contact lenses and they went on as if guided by an unseen hand.

My sight restored, I poked my head outside and began yelling. In seconds, monsters with glowing mono-eyes were grunting and bellowing, stuffing huge sacks as a black river rose around their legs.

The reality was simpler.

In the stygian darkness of a Tasmanian pre-dawn, on January 28, 2007, the South Cracroft River had flash-flooded and our campsite was fast disappearing under water.

What had begun as well-planned expedition to climb Federation Peak in South-West Tasmania was ending in a fury of tannin-coloured waters, as one and then three of our four tents were flooded.

Once carefully packed rucksacks now became mere containers for the desperate cramming of sodden gear, as the river continued to rise around our legs.

When Brian and Luke Richardson’s tent literally ended up under water, it became apparent that our trip had ended less than 24 hours after it had begun.

Six months of training walks, self-rescue sessions and long traditional climbing routes in the Blue Mountains had been included as part of the mental and physical preparation for our ascent of Australia’s highest cliff.

Six-hundred metres and 20 pitches of climbing up to Ewbank grade 18 was to be our reward for two days of carrying 30kg-plus packs.

We had chosen to access the remote South-West Tasmanian peak via the shortest route possible, the notorious Farmhouse Creek Track.

That was the plan. Unfortunately the Tasmanian summer had other plans.

When we disembarked from the rented people-carrier at the trackhead, it was raining.

As we posed for a group photograph the sun came out briefly, before once again being swallowed by the clouds. Apart from few feeble rays over the next few hours, that was the last of the sun.

On that first day we had planned to cover 18km and sleep at Cutting Camp before pushing on to Bechervaise Plateau, via the short and nasty Moss Ridge. From Bechervaise the climbing teams – Gus Davidson and I, Rick Fielding and John Shaw – would push onto Blade Ridge and in a two-day push link it with the North-West Face Route.

As it transpired, by near sundown on the first day we’d covered just 9km and found ourselves on the banks of the rising South Cracroft River.

Our progress had been slowed by a combination of our massive packs and the exhausting effort of having to negotiate dozens of massive, slippery, fallen trees that choke the Farmhouse Creek track.

With little choice, we bunked down for the night, feeling positive that the next day would be better. While the river was rising, checks later in the night indicated that it had slowed.

It was not until 5.30am – about two hours after the last level check – that Gus’s shout of my name, and the feeling of our tent floating, revealed that the river had broken its banks.

For the next two hours the eight of us worked in a frenzy to rescue our gear from the rising waters. When the madness ended it was 7.30am. At least two of the team had saturated sleeping bags, while three of the tents had been soaked inside and out.
I had no intention of being forced into a position where we would have to activate the EPIRBs that NSW electronics company GME had loaned us for the trip.

With no sign of the weather abating and the knowledge that the track in front of us followed the now raging floodplain for at least another 9km, the decision was regretfully made to abandon the trip.

For the first hour we waded through waist-high waters: the muddy buttongrass plains had become a river. With the track gone, the Garmin GPS units – again courtesy of GME – proved invaluable, as we followed the electronic breadcrumb trail back through the now flooded maze of thick scrub.

Nine hours after we had fled the South Cracroft River we were back at the car park where we had started. With no phone coverage and no scheduled pick-up for almost a week, we set up our sodden tents in the equally sodden car park, prepared for a long wait.

Then luck found us: Some rafters happened upon us and agreed to take one of our members – Simon Kearney – back to Hobart. The following morning Simon arrived with the rented bus and my worried parents in tow. In a few hours we were back in Hobart.

Determined to get some climbing in on this, so far, climbing-free trip, I proposed that we head for the granite cliffs of Coles Bay on Tasmania’s East Coast. Within a few hours six of us had downgraded our transport to a heavily laden Tarago and we were bound for the coast.

Luke and Brian elected to stay behind and make a tourist flight around Federation Peak. As it turned out, the weather in the South-West stayed rotten for three days. Scenic flights were grounded by 100km winds around the Federation Peak area, forcing Brian and Luke to return home to NSW.

Meanwhile, John, Rick, Gus, Simon, Jim Dickins and myself – along with John’s wife Marian and Marian’s dad Wizz – enjoyed four near-perfect East Coast days.

I hadn’t climbed in the area since the early ’90s but armed with the brand new Climb Tasmania guide and the older Craglets guide we picked out some classic easy lines.

We revelled in the warm, bombproof and high-friction granite trad routes. Among my highlights were beautiful crack climbs such as Cordon Bleu (15), on Lassie’s Wall and Slaughterhouse Five (16) on Whitewater Wall. Equally pleasant was the RP-protected corner Ice Nine (16) and several low-grade rambles up the 50m-high Whitewater Wall.

Perched high above the surging Southern Ocean, we used yet another GME product - UHF two-way radios - to communicate on the multi-pitch routes on the pleasant Whitewater Wall. For Team Pom - Rick and John - the opportunity to use the well-practised routines they had planned to use on Federation was not to be missed.

For Team Slackarse - Gus and I - it was a case of high quality cragging.

Whatever style was used, the climbing teams found that the East Coast days went a long way toward erasing the memory of our abortive Federation trip. It's hard to beat days on warm rock, bookended by bakery breakfasts and pub climbing post-mortems.

This erasure process continues, such that, among some members, there sounds to be the low rumblings of once more organising a trip to Federation Peak.

If and when they do come knocking, I hope that I’m not home.

Last hurrah at Tarana

By Rod Smith

Five metres above my last bolt, frying in the sun, working out how not to peel off what appears to be the crux moves and all the while feeling electrified rather than terrified by the situation: Welcome to Tarana.

A small band of us decided to head to Tarana (aka Evan’s Crown Nature Reserve) to beat the expected National Parks and Wildlife Service ban on climbing that the Sydney Rockies – through the efforts of access officer Kevin Westren – have been trying to head off.

This geological anomaly of giant granite tors, about 25 km from Lithgow, has been climbed on since the 1970s, its popularity waxing and waning on a regular cycle. It is a place of physical beauty, an important part of local Aboriginal culture but it is also a unique place to climb.

There is something undefinable about the area that makes it either a spooky or energising place to climb, depending on your perspective. On my third trip there, I had to keep reminding myself to climb rather than just sit amid the huge boulders, taking in the sheer beauty and otherworldliness of the area.

Impressed by Paul ‘Farty’ Turner’s bold lead of the classic Crown Buttress route Up The Nose of Love (16) I’d decided to give it a go myself. Three bolts in 35m is fairly run-out, even by Tarana’s infamous standards, but as with many climbs at Evan’s Crown Nature Reserve, once you’re there it all seems to make sense.

Gus and I had warmed up on other Crown Buttress classics including Jika Jika (17) and its companion climb Jailbreak from H-Block (17). After the varied steep slab of Up The Nose of Love (16) we wandered around and caught the evocatively named Blue Train (17).

Farty Paul, John ‘JB’ Shaw and Rick Fielding also visited Jika Jika and Jailbreak from H-Block before Team Pom – Rick and JB – decided to scrub bash their way up Passionate Pleasantries (13) on Googolplex crag.

At this point it’s worth pointing out that Farty, Rick and John were climbing as a trio because the Thrutch editor was a bit under the weather when we went to collect him on the morning of the trip.

After Passionate Pleasantries, which JB and Rick were neither passionate about nor did they think was pleasant, it was back to the quality routes on Crown Buttress.

With Farty Paul they climbed Your Neighbourhood Bolter (17) before linking it to Barry Dur for the top out. They then spent as much time jumping backwards and forth photographing each other negotiating the leap-off/walk-off as they did the actual climb.


Speaking of leaps, the highlight of the trip for me was watching Farty Paul come close to splitting in half as he bridged up Tanner’s Leap (13), the access climb to the very top of Evan’s Crown. Rick and JB followed.

Gus and I elected to not join the caravan. Instead we sat at the bottom of the crag and I photographed three weird-looking rock sprites waving at us from on high.

To those who have yet to visit Tarana the message is clear: GO NOW.

Route details can be found in the SRC publication Rockclimbs In the Upper Blue Mountains as well as Rock Magazine’s Pocket RockGUIDE, Evans Crown Tarana.

To read Kevin Westren’s excellent SRC submission to the NWPS about allowing climbing to continue at Tarana go here: www.sydneyrockies.org.au

Tarana pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/proseyr/tags/tarana/

Emu parade

By Rod Smith

Our first attempt to climb The Emu ended at a red backpack at the top of the cliff.

After frustrating hours spent getting lost and scrub-bashing along the indistinct trail to Kedumba Walls, the presence of another party on the 10-pitch adventure route spelled the end of our quest.

Annoyed, scratched and sleep-deprived we bowed to good judgement and decided that the four of us would end up climbing in the dark if we pushed on.

On that occasion we turned around and scrub-bashed back, in 30-degree temperatures, to the car and thence to the pub at Leura.

Savage with disappointment, we downed enough beers to unanimously vow never to go near The Emu again.

Yet here it was, just one month later and we – me, John Shaw, Rick Fielding and Gus Davidson – were once again standing at the top of this infamous adventure climb in the Blue Mountains near Sydney.

Our earlier trip had not been a waste. From the intelligence gained we reached the top of The Emu in just 45 minutes, compared with the two hours it had taken us the first time around.

There are two ways of accessing the climb. After reconnoitring the walkdown last time, we elected for the three-abseil option using our two sets of 60m double ropes to speed up the transitions.

After 90 minutes of abseiling and walking we reached the base of the climb. An old water bottle and various cairns mark the start.

There’s been a lot of stuff written about The Emu. Most significantly the uncomplimentary article in Rock magazine which makes the route sound like a death-trip.

There are also two route descriptions that vary significantly: Roger Bourne’s classy topo on the Boycetown website http://www.geocities.com/mountboyce/MainFrameSet.htm, with its detailed pitch descriptions and drawings, gives the route’s crux at 17.

The description in our own publication Rockclimbs in the Upper Blue Mountains calls the climb 15, with a 17 variant pitch.

From our point of view Roger’s information was on the money although Rockclimbs in the Upper Blue Mountains provides vital route-finding information.

The time was a bit after 11am as I led up the pleasant grade 14 slab corner/crack that is the first pitch. Gus quickly followed which allowed John and Rick to begin.

The second pitch was Gus’s and it required a short walk through a narrow chimney to the base of the cliff. This was followed by bridging up the tightish squeeze, using cams and nuts in the right-hand wall. After a slabby section, the pitch exits up an easy, unprotected, juggy orange wall near a cave.

Pitch 3, mine, was a bit scrappy with most of the protection being in the form of slings around a few small trees, followed by an unprotected haul onto a juggy slab behind a grasstree (blackboy).

The top out was on a small triangular stance with a dwarf apple gum, which Roger describes correctly as a “weak tree”.

I volunteered to also lead pitch 4 which is a slab corner that goes at either 14 or 16. For me this pitch felt like 16. The gear was also suspect: Gus was belayed into the weak tree and a 0 Friend while I tottered upwards, protected for the first half of the slab by a 00 Friend, a No. 2 RP and a No.1 Rock. After that there is no gear for the last 3m. A fall would have been nasty.

I believe pitch 4 is the same pitch on which first ascentionist Greg Mortimer (who put up the route with Lucas Trihey and John Ewbank in 1993) is pictured in Rock magazine.

The run-out to the top of the slab was followed by some nice climbing up a well-protected flake section before the top-out onto the treed ledge. Here we stopped for a 15-minute lunch break.

Gus scored pitch 5 which begins with a short climb up some blocks and then a traverse around a corner to an exposed position, looking onto massive walls of choss. We broke this pitch into two, with Gus leading both. The second part went up a shattered arête with good cams, into a sandy ledge which Gus gingerly traversed to the next tree belay. Roger notes that this part contains a “sickening void”.

I found pitch 6 quite enjoyable. It flows easily up a small orange wall then into a well-protected corner before exiting onto a gravelly ledge.

At grade 12, it felt easier than pitch 5 which is grade 11. After topping out on pitch 6 I wandered to the left and tied into some trees and welcome shade.

Pitch 7 starts directly above the tree belay. A steep bouldery start, it’s tough for a grade 14 which is why the small, dead tree at its base shows signs of being used as a de facto step ladder. Gus led this pitch which includes a tricky grovel through a backpack-grabbing tree onto a slab and up to a small ledge with a tree belay.

Pitch 8, the crux, was short and sharp. After setting off up the ferny left-wards groove I quickly found a nice cam on the left wall followed by a bomber hex in the corner. Some tricky stemming – which felt closer to grade 17 than 15 – was followed by another cam and a nut and a leftwards exit onto a ledge.

Wanting more crux I wandered leftwards along the ledge only to discover that that was the end of the pitch.

Gus followed up and quickly took off above my comfy two-cam belay to begin the grade 12 pitch 9. A well-protected chimney, it abruptly exits onto a scrubby she-oak (casuarina) ledge.

Rather than belay on the slippery slope scrub Gus bushwalked upwards, occasionally slinging trees, until he was close to the start of the final pitch.

Pitch 10 is a grade 5 or 8, depending on whose instructions you read. Really it was just an easy scramble upwards for 10m before the welcome sight of our backpacks.

Gus and I topped out at 5.55pm. John and Rick surfaced a bit over an hour later.

In the twilight we packed up. Half way out it was dark. With head torches on and John’s GME GPS providing vital route-finding corrections we found the car and from there we fled to the pub.

Over beers we vowed never to go near The Emu again…

Operation: Wolgan

By Rod Smith

Voices in the dark: Many garbled voices from over the UHF radio, and a single one coming from somewhere up on Lower Baldy.

The radio voices were the excited, massed gabblings of those back at the campsite where day two of the SRC Wolgan Valley sheep roast weekend was in full, boozy swing.

The lone voice belonged to Mike Patterson who with his second had decided to spend the night on the half-way ledge of Lower Baldy.

With four beers onboard myself, I had joined Hamish Kerr and Roger Austin in a search for the missing duo after they failed to return from a day on the hill.

Standing in the ruined tennis court of the Wolgan Valley mine manager’s house, we yelled Mike’s name. Minutes later a calm voice answered back. Mike told us that he was on The Chain and due to a certain shortness of abseil rope and lack of head torches would be spending the night on the half-way ledge.

A quick check of the Wolgan Valley guidebook revealed that the claimed 50-odd metre height of The Chain was probably more like 80m if they were on the ledge.

Aware that Mike, in the spirit of the ’70s-tinged feel of the sheep roast weekend, was wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a massive handlebar moustache, it was decided that a rescue would be effected, regardless of his shouted intentions.

The plan fell together. Hamish announced that he would walk up to the half-way ledge and locate the missing. Roger and I decided to go to the base of The Chain, near Secret Swinger, retrieve packs, head torches and the all important shoes and meet up with Hamish on the walkdown descent of Solo Gully.

With every walkie-talkie in the valley tuned to channel 1, the whole operation had the surreal feel of a reality TV show. But the reality was that it was more a retrieval than a rescue.

At the base of Secret Swinger Roger and I were joined by Hugh Ward and Nigel Donnelly. With both ready to climb The Chain in the dark it was only a radio call over Hamish’s walkie-talkie that scuttled their night-time ascent: Hamish had located the missing pair.

By 11pm everyone was back in camp. Most headed for their sleeping bags while others reached for another beer.

Beer seemed to be a key ingredient of the first SRC Wolgan sheep roast in several years.

For roast organisers Luke Merritt and Hugh Ward it had fortified them from 8am on the Saturday morning when they began to dig the fire pit and assemble the spit.

It kept fortifying them throughout the day as they watched the two dressed lambs slowly roast while the rest of the camp went off and climbed rocks.

They were still quaffing strongly when it came to carving up the roast at 9pm and on into 1am when your correspondent called it quits and hit the sack.

Among those attending was SRC Life Member and veteran of countless roasts Russell Taylor who is also the custodian of the spit.

Amid dozens of families who’d fled to the Wolgan for the October long weekend, SRC members claimed a chunk of the Little Capertee Campsite that is unremarkable but for the fact that it inexplicably contains a rock with a red Nazi swastika painted on it.

The roast itself was superb: beautifully cooked meat served with tabouli and flatbread and consumed with joy by the light of dozens of head torches.

For most, Monday heralded a return to the city. For myself and Jim Dickins it meant another three days of climbing in faultless spring weather.

After a nine-week absence from climbing due to an injured hand, six days of climbing in the Wolgan seemed to me the perfect way to make up for some lost time.

Highlights included the classic The Pulpit on Lower Baldy, the very fine Decline and Fall on Lower Coke Ovens, the hot, sunny May Day Mayday at Petrie’s and the imposing Khe Sanh at the Lower Coal Mines.

With the SRC gang gone and the town hordes significantly diminished the largely absent wildlife returned to the campsite.

On our last night Jim and I sat with our dwindling beers, amazed at the sight of six wombats grazing almost side by side like sheep while up in the sky a huge ring appeared around the almost-full moon.

Off-routed

By Rod Smith

It’s at Narrow Neck, it’s a three-star classic, old-school, must-do.

It sounds like a sales pitch.

In this case I was selling pitches, three of ’em, the ones that make up Fuddy Duddy. The buyer, as is usually the case, was Gus. And, as is usually the case, he said yes.

Trad-training for our big end-of-year trip we decided that it would be a valuable way to spend a few hours on a Saturday and give us an opportunity to break out the double ropes.

With John Shaw and Rick Fielding we completed the familiar two-hour drive from coastal Sydney to the deep canyons of the Blue Mountains.

We abseiled down Herbaceous Gully and waved John and Rick goodbye when they stopped at their goal Cave Climb.

By the time that Gus and I got to the base of our route, carried out our ablutions, racked up, drank water and decided where the first pitch started it was near 10am on one of those glorious blue and sunny days that are considered winter by Sydneysiders.

Words to the effect of "smaller block down and right of the monster” and “wall to ledge below top of block” in Bede Harrington’s indispensable Rockies’ compendium “Rockclimbs in the Upper Blue Mountains” - seemed to concur with what we looking at, as did the initials FD at the bottom of the intended pitch. Confident that we were on track, I headed up the wall, past a bolt then lots of easy climbing, another bolt and then a comfy ledge with two carrots form a double-bolt belay.

It did not occur to me even when Gus reached the belay that we might be on the wrong pitch. The penny only dropped after I headed off around the corner to be confronted by what I considered to be a gear-free death traverse to the obvious corner and crack second pitch that gives the climb its 15 grade.

Reversing the moves I told Gus what I suspected had happened. Together, with new eyes, we noticed how the bolts of the belay were actually sticking out an unhealthy distance and how the huge detached flake below us and a metre distant from the rest of the cliff had the familiar whitened patina of classic, oft-climbed sandstone routes.

We concluded that the description in the book was probably the original 1960s route. My mind vaguely recalled reading in Mike Law’s guide how the first pitch of Fuddy Duddy had “fallen off” in a rock slide that was now generally considered to be stable…

We had somehow wandered up another route that appeared to finish at the two dodgy bolts or else traverse out wildly to the right below a roof and around a corner. According to Bede’s book it’s likely that it was Riverstone One, the route description to which notes “route details in dispute”.

The only thing to do was to sacrifice some gear to the rock gods, rap off the long bolts and gently pendulum onto the top of the big fin of rock that is Fuddy Duddy’s true first pitch. A long quickdraw and two biners poorer and we were at the base of the second pitch.

At it turned out this pitch alone was worth the hefty price of admission.

A soaring corner crack, it begins with a bolt-protected move before seguing into an offwidth that requires a borrowed number 5 Camalot for protection. After that it’s a glorious feast of stemming and laybacking or jamming to the end of the pitch.

The final pitch is also a gem of a different style. Notionally a 13 it begins with an old- school grade 18 bouldery start that allows you to clip a trusty piton. I actually opted for the right-hand start which seemed marginally easier than the left-hand heave that Gus opted for. I also placed a cam rather than solely trust the trusty piton

After that is the chimney. Fat folks need not apply.

I found plenty of gear in the left hand wall, closer to the outside of the chimney. In the bit where the gear was sparse I was so firmly squeezed, what with two layers of warm gear and my rack, that I was never going to fall out. A nice number 3 Friend allowed me to get out of the chimney and stem up on its outside edge to enjoy airy positions and the jet-stream that was funneling upwards and providing a vertical tailwind.

After a couple of false starts weighed down by the daypack Gus was directly below me. We then packhauled the daypack on one of the half ropes to allow Gus full enjoyment of the squeeze chimney.

Back at the car I calculated that a mere 95m of climbing had taken us almost 5 hours. As we pondered this and munched our sandwiches in the winter sun, we decided that we really didn’t care how long it had taken.

In the words of Fuddy Duddy fan club member Will Monks “If you don't like this climb f*** off to Centennial Glen or Nowra and don't come back!”.

Frenchman's Cap: The Walk

Article from The Sun-Herald's Explore magazine.

By Rod Smith

LIKE a signpost, the sun-bleached King Billy pine stump marked the top of Barron Pass and the end of our struggle up the steep, rainforested slopes.

For the past two hours life had been reduced to a slow trudge up to the mountain pass which marks the psychological, if not lineal, half-way point of the 50km return trip to Frenchmans Cap in South-West Tasmania.

With the end of the climb up to the pass and our weighty packs off our backs, our surroundings came into sharp focus on this hot, Tasmanian summer day. Out of a near cloudless western sky loomed our goal, the massive quartzite half-dome of Frenchmans Cap.

Like a single tooth biting the blue sky, the 1446m peak’s sudden re-emergence – after a short, tantalising glimpse at the start of the walk the previous day – stripped away our fatigue. It was a view that held us for a good 40 minutes at Barron Pass, much longer than we had so far lingered anywhere else on the walk in.

It was a view that also meant just two hours more walking to our second night’s accommodation, the sturdy little 16-berth hut beside Lake Tahune. From Tahune Hut we planned to make our bid for the summit of the Cap and enjoy the expansive views into the surrounding World Heritage wilderness, weather willing.

Our trip had begun at 10am the previous day when our six-man party had travelled for four hours from Launceston in a hired 12-seater bus.

The Frenchmans Cap National Park trackhead begins on the Lyell Highway, about 55km from the West Coast mining hub of Queenstown. On the way there we passed through Derwent Bridge and the terminus of the renowned Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park Overland track. But where the Overland Track is so popular that a one-way walking rule and limits on walker numbers have been introduced to regulate the booted hordes, Frenchmans Cap National Park remains comparatively low-key.

But as the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service warns in its literature Frenchmans “is considerably more arduous than many other Tasmanian walks, including the Overland Track”.

The Frenchmans Cap walk traditionally begins, as did ours, with a group photograph beneath the Frenchmans Cap sign. After registering our walk details in the track logbook we made the pleasant 10-minute walk to the banks of the Franklin River.

It’s the same Franklin that in 1983 international outcry and a High Court ruling saved from becoming part of a new hydro-electricity impoundment.

Two years after that victory, in 1985, a teenager and his mates hauled themselves and their packs across the Franklin in a flying fox as they embarked on their first ever Frenchmans Cap walk. Twenty-one years later and I’m no longer a teenager, I’m back with a different set of mates but disappointingly there’s no flying fox. Nowadays a springy one-at-a-time suspension bridge gets you across the river in seconds.

After crossing the river our party sorted itself into two groups: father and son Simon and Peter Kearney would travel at their own pace, probably camping at one of the tent sites. My group of four was determined to reach the spacious 20-berth hut at Lake Vera, 16km away.

The decision to break our group into two parties was both expedient and safe: Each group carried tents and an EPIRB (or Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) as well a pair of UHF walkie-talkies tuned to the same channel. In the event of injury or sudden and severe weather we could make camp, communicate with one another or, as a last resort, set off an EPIRB and wait for the rescue helicopter to come.

For Simon the trip was something of a personal odyssey: his maternal great-grandfather was none other than J. E. Philp the hardy bushman who, with two companions, was contracted to cut the original Frenchmans Cap track in 1910 as a prospector’s track. Philp’s exploratory efforts are remembered in landmarks like Philps Peak, Philps Lead and Philps Creek. Lake Vera is named after Philp’s wife, Simon’s great-grandmother.

The Parks and Wildlife Service warn prospective Frenchmans Cap walkers that the track in general has a surface that “may be rough and muddy over extended sections, especially across the Loddon Plains”. This is an understatement. The Loddon Plains are always rough and muddy, hence their nickname the Sodden Loddons.

For Frenchmans Cap walkers this seemingly endless buttongrass bog is the first day’s major obstacle. Admittedly the first hour away from the river is a long uphill drag around Mount Mullens, but it is not as mentally demanding or physically taxing as the Sodding Loddons.

Unlike many popular Tasmanian walking tracks, only a tiny part of the Loddons has been boarded. This has resulted in an ever-spreading network of unofficial tracks as successive walkers attempt to avoid the worst of the mud.

Make no mistake, whatever strategy you use you’re going to get very muddy. After carefully and cleanly negotiating the early sections you’ll invariably step onto a solid-looking piece of track and suddenly it will swallow you up to your knees. After spells of wet weather that could mean sinking up to your waist.

It took our four-man party three hours to cross the plains using a combination of hopping from tussock to tussock, edging carefully around the bogs and charging through and hoping the mud wasn’t as deep as it looked. We baked beneath a sun that on that first day reached 31 degrees C in Queenstown. We drank litres of water from the many small streams that flow along the way, even in the height of summer. Then suddenly the track veered west and began climbing a gentle hill. We had cleared the Loddons.

Encased in an armour of mud up to our knees, we took a short break and snacked on that most ubiquitous of bushwalker delicacies the dried fruit and nuts mix called scroggin. Keeping up energy stores by staying well fed and thus fuelled is as important as being well hydrated.

As we sat dozens of voracious march flies descended upon us. Slow, dopey and resembling a blowfly, march flies are perhaps the least enjoyable aspect of summer walking in Tasmania. They disappear when you’re move but attack relentlessly when you are stopped. The only bonus is that they’re quite easy to swat and so provided us with ongoing opportunities for vengeance, when we could be bothered.

Aside from the flies, the thought of clean clothes and the night’s hot food brought us to our feet and we pushed on towards Lake Vera Hut. With the Loddons behind us we reasoned that the day’s obstacles had disappeared. Not so. As would happen a number of times on this challenging walk, one obstacle was replaced by another.

The steep drag up through the temperate rainforest of Philps Lead sapped our final reserves of strength. Conversation ceased and all of us could feel the twitch of muscles starting to cramp, no doubt due to the salt loss from our voluminous sweating. Even as we began the descent into Lake Vera there was little to be said.

After almost eight hours of walking we just wanted to get there.

It’s amazing what a cup of pea and ham soup, a wash down in a mountain stream, dry clothes and the prospect of a soft, inflatable Thermarest mattress will do for the psyche of the exhausted bushwalker. Within two hours of taking up residence in the bright and cheery circa 1979 Lake Vera Hut our enthusiasm had returned.

The next morning, after a sleep-in, the four of us decided to push on to Lake Tahune.

So far the weather had been fine, but there were no guarantees it would stay that way.

The Frenchmans Cap area is one where the Parks and Wildlife Service notes that “rain normally falls on 15 to 20 days each month during summer and more often in other seasons”.

It would be fair to say that the beauty of the ancient moss-covered myrtle beeches, sassafras and other rainforest species that cover the sheltered slopes beneath Barron Pass were apparent to me on the walk out of Frenchmans Cap, but not on that second morning as we grunted up the inclines.

During that two-hour ascent my mind alternated between a succession of banal pop songs, that had somehow become lodged in my mind and were now being played on high rotation in my head, and focusing on the track markers. After spotting a marker I’d promise myself a rest when I reached that point, then I’d will myself on to the next and insist that all along I had meant the next marker was the rest spot.

Using this combination of self-deluding head games and my internal FM station from hell, I managed to make the top of Barron Pass just in front of the other three, if only to get my mind back on the scenery. The pass is an exposed saddle bookended by quartzite: the slender pinnacle of Nicole’s Needle and the squat bulk of Sharland’s Peak. When I called down and told the others that I’d made the top the news was met with a mixture of joy and responses that promised murder if it wasn’t so.

We spent the time at Barron Pass lunching on flatbread, cheese and salami and simply staring at the vast bulk of the snow-white rock of Frenchmans Cap.

After lunch we left Barron Pass and headed dramatically downwards before the track climbed once more before gaining a ridgeline. From there we descended into the sheltered and surreally green Artichoke Valley, with its soft beds of sphagnum moss and the plentiful pineapple grass from which it derives its name.

From there it was up some steep metal stairs to the top of another ridge around some hillsides, and a sharp descent until suddenly Tahune Hut appeared out of the trees. It had been almost 5 hours since we’d left Lake Vera.

Lake Tahune itself is a place of immense beauty that is best described by E. T. Emmett in his indispensable 1953 and sadly out-of-print book Tasmania by Road and Track: “The immediate surroundings of this sepia pool are pines, and right out of it for a sheer couple of thousand feet rise the white cliffs of Frenchmans Cap’’.

Tahune Hut was built in 1971 to replace the original that was destroyed by fire. It is small and cosy with room for 16 at a pinch but better suited to about 12. We shared the hut with six others: five people from Sydney’s central coast and a well travelled Irishman who walks mostly in Scotland.


We awoke on the third day to weather that was more spring than summer – windy, cool and threatening rain. Within hours, however, summer had returned. With the prospect of 360-degree vistas on the top of the mountain we packed our daypacks and headed up the serpentine walker’s track that takes you to the top of the mountain.


The track to the top has changed in recent years and now avoids the north col which is undergoing intensive rehabilitation work. Instead the 450m ascent takes a zig-zagging path up durable rock shelves and a couple of low-angled rock slabs. It’s a steep climb but after two days of heavy packs it felt like a stroll to the shops.

Less than an hour later we were standing on top of the Cap on a near perfect day. Out west we could see the jagged shores of Macquarie Harbour and the shining sands of deserted beaches. To the north we picked out Tasmania’s highest peak Mount Ossa and the other significant high points in the Cradle Mt-Lake St Clair National Park. Closer to Frenchmans we simply marvelled at how the ancient peaks protruded like bones from the verdant skin of the heavily forested earth.

When surveyor James Sprent became the first person to officially climb the Cap in 1853, Tasmania was still known as Van Diemen’s Land and the transportation of convicts had only stopped the previous year. Amazingly 153 years later the vistas that Sprent enjoyed are little changed from the views that we spent two hours absorbing.

Sprent would have been surprised by the westerly view, which now includes the vast man-made hydro-electric impoundment called Lake Burbury. But his surveyor’s soul would probably have rejoiced over the engineering feat that is the Lyell Highway.

For us urban-dwellers the view was extraordinary simply because in every direction that we looked humanity appeared to be absent. Lake Burbury could have been a natural lake and the Lyell Highway – visible here and there – was devoid of cars. Everywhere else was simply mountains and unbroken tracts of forest.

After two hours of visual feasting only the banality of hunger and the promise of stodgy, freeze-dried Mexican chicken, bulked up with Deb instant potato, drew us back down the mountainside. That night, as we ate our carbohydrate-rich concoction, I felt the first pangs of what in the next few days would become regret. Tomorrow when we began the walk back our adventure would be drawing to its end.

The next morning, after accepting that the trip was more than half done, it seemed more pragmatic to focus on the positive side of returning to the inhabited earth. So if climbing the Cap was the single motivator for the three-days before, drinking beer and eating a huge counter meal at the Derwent Bridge Hotel was the dual motivator for our return to civilisation.

Our return journey to the Lyell Highway covered the same ground but it asked less of us: our diminishing food made our packs lighter and there were more down hills than ups. The two-day walk out took us a total of eight hours with plenty of time to stop and enjoy what we’d missed coming in. In comparison it had taken us 12 hours to cover the same distance during the walk in.

On a day that we emerged from the bush the temperature again reached 30 degrees C. After several hours spent washing clothes, swimming and relaxing on the rocky shores of the Franklin River the call of the unwild became stronger than ever.

By late afternoon the six of us were back together, this time sitting in the cool dimness of the Derwent Bridge Hotel. Still wearing the same clothes we’d worn on and off for the past five days, we drank beer like it was the tannin coloured Lake Tahune water, which it resembled. We spoke tiredly and sporadically of a trip now fast becoming a memory.

And whether it was simply tiredness or the softness of the hotel’s couches I’m not sure, but at times I felt myself momentarily absent, the beer glass in my hand tipping dangerously. It was as if I was back there, among the white sun-warmed rocks, on top of a mountain peak shaped liked a tooth, drinking in the views.

Fear and loathing in South-West Tasmania

By Rod Smith

Beneath the massive half-dome of Frenchman’s Cap my courage shattered and fell like a shard of quartzite rock kicked from the summit.

As the 7am summer sun warmed the white rock of the distinctive 1446m peak in South-West Tasmania, all that I could think of were reasons not to climb.

“I’m not doing it, I’m coming down,’’ I announced to my climbing partner Gus Davidson and Simon Kearney, who’d come along for the walk.

The first mistake was skipping coffee. The second was believing that the cold, shaded, crumbling, overhanging gully could possibly be the start of Tierry Le Fronde. The third was heading up it.


When I finally decided to bail, it felt like a betrayal, but at that moment I didn’t care.

“Some times you have to obey the screaming little man inside, this is one of those times,’’ I sagely told Gus and Simon.

Then I sat down and, head in hands, began a mental battle: Screaming Little Man versus rational me.

In the meantime Simon and Gus wandered off, taking photographs of each other, and the magnificent surroundings.

Or so I’m told.

Oblivious to all, I sat for what turned out to be an hour trying to get back some mental equilibrium. Then I announced it was time that the three of us went and did something with the day. Perhaps a bushwalk, or a lazy day sitting in the sun at Lake Tahune, reading a book.

Over on The Sydney Route, I spied a tiny speck that the camera zoom showed was Nigel Donnelly belaying Mike Patterson who was negotiating the fifth pitch of Jack Pettigrew and Bryden Allen’s 1965 classic route.


Nigel, Mike, Gus and I had been training for weeks to climb the 380m, 13-pitch, grade 17 The Sydney Route.

When the allotted day came for Gus and me to head up the line the morning was wet and windy and we all went back to sleep, ignoring the intended 5am start. Later, in improving weather, we reconnoitred the route from its base only to find that its shady, upper pitches were wet.

Gus and I discussed the possibility of climbing and after gazing at it for a couple of hours we concluded that as a team, even if we had started on time and the rock had been dry, we probably weren’t up to the rigours of the route.

On that same day, as the four of us sat in the sun on top of Frenchman’s Cap taking in the views on a near perfect summer’s day, we firmed up our plans for the next day. Gus and I would seek a more achievable but no less worthy prize: Tierry Le Fronde a grade 16 climb of six pitches. Nigel and Mike would have The Sydney Route all to themselves.

But my plans to bag a classic were as if dust the next morning as I walked back up the steep descent gully after bailing off the climb. I felt angry as I studied the startling arête that Tierry Le Fronde follows for most of its 150m length. I felt unworthy to be carrying the rack of Friends and Hexes that dragged around my neck.

Then I thought of the sheer efforts we’d made to be here. How our six-man party had carried 30kg-plus packs in 30-degree plus weather. How we’d grunted up hill and down dale to gain 900m vertical height, spent hours negotiating the energy-sapping Loddon Plains bogs before finally collapsing at Lake Tahune after slogging 25km in two days. Not to mention the logistics of getting everyone and their gear to South-West Tasmania.

It’s true that we were all fatigued from the massive efforts of the walk in – by trip’s end and despite eating massively I had lost almost 5kg. But if the walk was a difficult grind then the climbing was meant to be the pleasurable reward. Now here I was about to throw it all in. It seemed so selfish, impotent and just downright rude.

I stopped, uncoiled the rope and said to Gus “I think I’ll just head up here for a look”.

Thirty metres off the deck, climbing in the sun on an easy angled-slab I placed my first piece of protection and everything felt right. “I think I’ll keep going,” I told Gus.

We were on the way.

For the next six hours the pair of us revelled in the challenge of this classic route. Sustained and exposed, it follows the shadows to the left-hand side of the main arête up the Tahune face.

After the 45m long slabby non-pitch to a big ledge, the first pitch led up a pleasant sun-illuminated wall before gaining a small stance and ducking into the shadows.

I inadvertently strung together the second and third pitches. That 56m mega-pitch provided some of the most enjoyable climbing that I have ever done. It was here that the crux appeared about the same time as a rusted and bent-over piton, possibly placed by the first ascentionists – Chris Dewhirst and Phillip Stranger in 1968.

Despite repeated attempts to clip the piton I was forced to climb on, the distance between me and my last piece of protection growing longer.

Interestingly I remember feeling no fear: instead I felt the thrill of being high up in an exposed position, stemming on small holds and engrossed in the task at hand. It was a task complicated by the dwindling amount of gear on my rack.

After a couple of attempts with wires I settled on a tiny cam. From there I ran it out to the top of the third pitch – an airy perch on an exposed pinnacle with huge views of the surrounding wilderness.

Tied into a number 10 hex that someone else had left behind, I brought Gus up. We both felt good and took a couple of photographs with my compact film camera to mark the occasion.

The next pitch began with a delicate unprotected traverse then up a not-so-delicate face to a large ledge. Then it was around the ledge and up to the base of a corner. Here Gus and I stood and gazed up at the impressive overhangs that provided the last obstacle to the top.

With the end in sight I led off and was soon among a series of overhanging quartzite fins. Some careful stemming around shifting blocks combined with some full-blooded hauling on more secure holds brought me to the final overhang. With one handjammed beside a protruding flake and searching for a cam, I looked down as my last bit of gear lifted out and slid down the rope. Six metres above my last piece of protection, I felt the protruding flake shift beneath the pressure of my jam.

Now beginning to feel vulnerable I quickly selected a cam and plugged it in beside the shifting flake before setting off and up and onto the belay seat. Gus quickly followed and we both stood on a small perch looking up at the exit, a sloping offwidth but easy chimney with which we quickly dispensed.

Sitting in the alpine bushes in the sun and finally eating our lunch, I felt happy and euphoric. As we took in the views I privately compared the now with the then of six hours previously when I’d begun the climb.

In the morning I had wanted to give the game away, now I wanted to climb forever.

Much later, Gus and I were relaxing back at Tahune Hut when the two-way radio went scratchy with static before seguing into Mike Patterson saying “Rod are you there? We’ve just finished?”. Ten hours and 13 pitches later Mike and Nigel were 400 vertical metres above us, descending down to the hut with Simon.

That night, over several shots of whisky, we traded tales about our day out on white rock under blue skies.

Please excuse our French

By Rod Smith

After months of traditional climbing training we are now on the cusp of the long-awaited trip to Frenchman’s Cap.
(Picture, right: The South-East Face. The Sydney Route is the second route from the left).

On Friday Gus, Nigel, Mike and I will fly to Tasmania to prepare for our Sunday walk into the Cap.

Simon and his dad will complete our party, although they’ll be doing the walk only.

The four climbers have their sights set on Bryden Allen’s 1965 classic route A Toire La Gloire or, as it is more popularly known, The Sydney Route.

Three of the climbing party are members of the Sydney Rock Climbing Club, so it’s appropriate that we’re revisiting a route put up by one of our most accomplished members and one of Australian climbing’s most unsung heroes.

I can’t help but admit to feeling a little anxious, what with the route being 380m long with about five sustained pitches in the grade 16 or 17 area.

But as I offered to Mike today, the only thing we can do is take it one pitch at a time.

Any way, we’ll be back in Sydney on January 29 by which time I hope to have many tales to tell.

Two classics in one day

By Rod Smith

This is about three blokes who climbed two classics in one day.

There’s a little bit about the lure of coffee and the death of the day, but mostly it's about Sweet Dreams and Tom Thumb.

One is an old-school classic, the other is a new classic. Both can be found in the Blue Mountains, near Leura.

Sweet Dreams (14) is 40-plus years old, about 177m in length and was created by that most determined of rock masters, Bryden Allen.

In comparison Tom Thumb (13) is just over 12 months old, about 150m in length and is named after the baby son of its creator, Hayden Brotchie.

On this day Hayden joined Gus Davidson and I for a trip up Sweet Dreams, with a possible look at its variant 17 finish, but not necessarily.

Others have written of mini-epics on Sweet Dreams, of fear and vertical dancing by torchlight. We had none of that.

We left Sydney at 6am, began climbing Sweet Dreams at 8am and by noon we were back in Leura brunching among the polo-shirt crowd.

In between we joked our way up the well-worn sandstone of one of the Blue Mountains’ justifiably most popular routes. The 25m traverse of the third pitch is alone worth the trip with its exposure, ease and perfect photo opportunities. (See pic above).



Even the variant final pitch – which bristles with bolts for most of the way before a few bomber cam-placements at the end – seemed to glide by well below its 17 grading.

(Left pic: Sweet Dreams. Rod on the airy fourth pitch).

It was back in Leura, as I nursed my second coffee and contemplated a third, that Hayden casually asked, “Do you guys want to do another climb?”. Caffeinated and enthusiastic there was only one answer.




By 1pm we’d driven across to the Grose Valley, walked to Fortress Ridge and completed three double-rope abseils to the base of Tom Thumb.

(Right pic: Hayden mid-traverse on Sweet Dreams).

Shoes at the top anchor bolts alerted us to the presence of others on the climb. We assumed they were well up the route and possibly close to topping out. But when we reached the base of the climb we found that the party’s leader had only just begun the second pitch.

Our trio was quickly up the short and easy pitch one. At the base of the second pitch we found Dan and Phil. Dan explained that John was leading pitch two and that Phil was new to the outdoor climbing game.

Dan also described how he and the other two guys had recently been benighted on a canyoning trip. He also mentioned that he and John had been caught out after dark on a couple of occasions. Then Dan asked if we wanted to race ahead of their party. In good spirits we declined.


After Dan disappeared upwards we began the second pitch, with its grunty step-up start.

(Right pic: Rod leading Tom Thumb pitch two.)

Playing cat-and-mouse with the other party, we climbed in blazing sunshine. First up the short, sharp and gear-protected third pitch and then onto the well-bolted fourth, which ascends an elegant arête before heading up a funky buttress.

At the start of this story I mentioned the death of the day, well that happened at the end of the fourth pitch. When the sun dipped behind the mountains John was yet to begin leading his party up the fifth pitch. It was then that the word benighted briefly flickered in my head.

Hayden was confident that we’d be off well before the twilight had given away to a moonless night. I was not. As we waited and talked and monitored the others’ progress, it became clear that the darkness would win.

In the gloom it was decided that I should pinkpoint the fifth and crux pitch, following closely in the wake of Dan. After leading the previous four pitches I admit to feeling a little cheated about not getting to onsight the crux pitch, but Hayden’s logic was sound.

At the top of the fifth pitch I brought Gus up and then Hayden. With the other party heading slowly up the last pitch our trio decided that I should stay at the fifth pitch belay and Hayden should lead through.

Five hours after we began, as I simul-climbed in the dark with John up the last pitch of Tom Thumb, I briefly questioned our decision not to forge ahead of the other trio. But only briefly.

After topping out on the precarious summit ridge, we retreated to a nearby cave and by torchlight sorted out the two parties’ pile of mixed up gear. As we talked and prepared for the 45-minute walk back to the cars, I could see in the others’ faces and hear in their voices why Tom Thumb, like Sweet Dreams, deserved classic status: It encapsulates all the reasons why climbers love to climb.

Full details of Tom Thumb – including detailed access and route topos – can be found on www.sydneyrockies.org.au.

Alien landscape

By Rod Smith

Deep within the sport-climbing cosmos, somewhere in the cool orbit of the Nowra galaxy, there exists a little-explored world.

Sandwiched between the rings of Butt head (17) and the nubbins of Beavis (20), lies the richly contoured world of the Barbie Twins (16).

It is to this lost trad world that men and women who delight in gear that clanks rather than ticks can take refuge when the click-snip of the over-populated vertical surfaces of the Nowra galaxy grow too much.

A trip to this curiously named place provides relief from such weird Nowra rituals as hang-dogging, sending, linking and the most bizarre of all, top-rope rehearsal.

On Barbie Twins there exists only the handjam, the layback, the cam, the hex and the fear of falling on runout gear.

At just 16 it’s a tiny part of the Nowra galaxy but for those who can withstand the stares and questions as they don their trad racks in the departure lounge, it’s a trip worth making.

The beautiful, juggy edge of the crack provides some glorious jamming and stemming possibilities before it fines down into a shallow groove. Just above this grooviness two cams in a generous, but flaring, vertical break will give you enough courage to gaston and balance across the zone where the crack meets slab.

Ironically, it’s in this very place on the either side of the Barbie Twins that those on Butt head and Beavis will be tackling similar nuanced climbing.

But unlike those souls, friends of the Barbie Twins will be wandering up a boltless expanse, in a place far, far above and below their next bit of gear.

When it’s done and you’ve grabbed the exit jugs and dodged the wasps living close-by in one of the horizontal breaks, it’s time to use new-fangled technology and thread the lower-off rings on Beavis.

As you re-enter the wonderful world of sports and hurriedly stow you trad rack deep in your pack, sneak a peak back at the Barbie Twins and feel satisfied you took the effort and made the trip.