Friday, January 21, 2011

The Buff

After a couple of busy months I finally had some time over the holidays for an escape up to Mt. Buffalo and to get some climbing done with Geoff Gledhill, whom I met briefly in the Arapiles parking lot when hanging out with Fred. One of the legitimate olde dads of Australian rock climbing, Geoff has been scouring The Buff for new routes since the mid 60's and qualifies as the best climbing partner I've yet to churn up in Oz. Two years into retirement and as keen of a rock climber as you're ever likely to meet, Geoff spends much of his time winching terrified noobs up routes he put up 40 years ago - which, while having it's merits, can still get a bit tiring. Our kindred tastes for granite cracks, simul-climbing and relaxing fun complement perfectly and Geoff was grinning like a bird-fed cat to be sailing up routes with Yosemite-style tactics in an hour or two that would otherwise have taken most of a day and a fair amount of drama.


Two of our outings turned out to be noteworthy and the first occurred after doing a couple of routes on The Castle one fine afternoon. Geoff mentioned that he had once ventured, with the late Chris Baxter, across the meadow to Corral Peak where they had spied a couple of cracks appearing well worth climbing but that they had never gotten around to revisiting. How right he was! What we found scattered around the peak were three or four splitter hand cracks ranging from probably 6-10 meters in height that, by his reckoning, remained unclimbed. Wide-eyed with disbelief, I had fortunately brought along my shoes and chalk bag and eagerly plunked down in the grass, shod myself, and started up like a rabid chimp. All good climbs, if still a bit gritty, I can definitely recommend them either to soloists or folks looking for good training cracks and/or convenient top-roping in a nice location just twenty minutes from the road.

Our second notable outing occurred after I convinced Geoff to come examine a new route I had spied months ago near The Hump and had already done a bit of the prep work on. The day prior, we had been discussing the tendency of first ascentionists to be convinced that their routes are the best climbs in any given area so I was trying to lay off the enthusiasm a bit but, after rapping down for a preview, Geoff had to agree that it is an amazing feature that "is going to be quite an adventure". The next day we borrowed the requisite tools and installed a two-bolt anchor and one protection bolt high on the route where the crack runs out into a blank scoop. I cleaned up some of the holds, installed a fixed wire at the start and thus the route, The Pimp Hand (left hand held as if to backhand somebody, then view photo), was ready for a free attempt that was going to have to wait as this week had come to an end.


A bit obsessed and dreaming about the moves at night, I got Susy to come belay me the following week so I could try to work out the moves on a top rope. I knew it was going to be hard, I was speculating maybe 5.12+ and that if I trained a bit I would be able to send, but there's no way around what happened - I got brutally slapped down not even able to pull onto to rock for the first 30 feet. Susy laughed and laughed, "I thought you were a good rock climber, but wow, you really suck!" Thanks, darling. Yes, it was indeed a comical failure, but it was also rather depressing after being so amped up to climb something hard again and to, well, not even come close.


Therefore, the Pimp Hand is now an open project awaiting somebody a lot stronger than me, probably one of them Cossey brothers or some visiting international fingercrack aficionado, but aid climbers would still have a lot of fun here. I think it's probably in the neighborhood of 5.13+ (Aussie 30ish), but maybe I'm just super lite. In the first image above (taken from the top of the second-to-last ski lift at Tatra) I'm already swinging back into the crack which gives some indication of the steeeeep angle. The second shot shows the first lock, at the bottom of the photo, which now has a fixed wire in it as you enter by leaning off a crimp undercling on the right-side arete. So there it is folks, get up there and have yourselves some fun!

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