Grotesque

Six in the morning seemed a reasonable time to meet in the Capel pub carpark, and Andrew was amenable to that idea.  What I kinda guessed but didn’t think, or more likely hoped, would not happen was that the mercury was low.  On the drive down it dipped to a mere finger numbing 1 degree and on arrival at the crag carpark it had only risen to 3 degrees.  Surprisingly neither of us felt the cold walking down and it was a glorious clear sky morning.  As we wandered down the rocks Andrew spied the red and white tape:

Seems that the official top wall anchors have been tested, and a good number of them must have failed to meet standard.  We both agreed that the standard was more than likely way above the expectations of us climbers, and had a giggle at how most of the bolts on the climbs would probably fail dismally.  Yet still we trust in them.  Having checked the forecast daily this week, Saturday had always looked a sure bet.  We were greeted with clean crisp waves rolling in with the spray being gently blown back out to sea by the light westerlies.  Perfect:

After the last few cool mornings out where the first climb had made our fingers go numb, we decided on a slightly different approach to get the day’s activities started.  Shorter routes and also not quite as challenging.  So seeking something that I hadn’t been on for a while I plumped for this one.  While it never felt too hard it did feel a little run out, and for some reason my body was not as fluid as it normally is on rock.  The good news being that my fingers didn’t go blue and it strangely felt quite a comfortable temperature:

I did do a bit of mucking about to belay off to the side in order to get the best angles for images as Andrew followed up.  This led me to a great hanging belay that I raved about just a little bit in my head.  Is it just me that thinks there is something beautiful about a full hanging belay?  Normally I have a keen memory for routes and every detail about them, but I didn’t recognise one piece of this puzzle.  Was it old age befuddling my brain or had I never been on it?  I’m not going to give the name away and will instead see which of the local climbers recognises it:

Andrew had taken a few images of me on lead, as yet I don’t have them and as usual I have rushed in and written the trip report up before being provided the additional images.  Um Steve did you not have some from our trip to Castle Rock last weekend that you were going to send me?  I digress, after Andrew had taken the images he slipped his phone into his jacket pocket, and when he went to take the above image on his phone it was not there.  Fortunately we found it undamaged and it looks like it fell out as he was belaying and not climbing:

Hence why on his lead he decided, as the image above shows, not to take his phone with him while climbing.  It has been a little while since he has been out, and his trips out have also been few and far between.  But today I was keen to ensure that we went lead for lead, he’s got the strength, stamin and skills it was more his head that needed sorting out.  So taking things one step at a time I encouraged him to lead Setting Sun.  Being fully bolted the gear would be one less thing to mess with his brain:

He did a neat job of the lead was on atop the wall, and I have to say I didn’t check if he used the anchors that had been marked as unsafe to use for his belay.  We both did a lot of wave watching today, the predicted rough sea seems a little tamer than expected and we put it down to the low tide.  So low in fact that there were rock bars exposed that neither of us recalled seeing before.  We were quietly hoping to see some dolphins cruise by and surf the cleaner waves, but with the lower water levels and exposed rocks our hopes were not high: 

During his lead Andrew had picked up on a detail that I hadn’t previously noticed.  The p-bolts on the route he climbed had a little lizard engraved in them, no doubt an indication of the brand.  The relevance being that he thought Howsie would be keen to see this, in view of his dad being called the silver lizard.  Andrew didn’t know why and it has got me wondering whether that was some secret code name for sinister operations he was entwined in, um Howsie please let me know before my theories get too obscure.  Thought I would also point out that this bolt looks, admittedly from only from the parts we could see, as being in way worse condition that all those marked as unsafe:

Shorter routes seemed to be order of the day.  This was no longer necessary due to coldness, but it was the way things worked out.  Andrew continued climbing on in a t-shirt after only the first climb while I still kept my buffalo on, for most of the morning.  I decided that after putting Mikie on Gargoyle way back, and watching him flail around on the crux sequence and never completing the line, I should give it a bash myself.  This line I did recall, and it was as tricky and pumpy as I remembered it.  We both did a bit of yo-yoing when the going got tough, but also both managed to get up it cleanly:

Next up Andrew liked the look of Brepus, a low grade line that often throws people due to the need to jam.  If you don’t jam the crux move feels many grades harder and leaves those people bleating and screeching about under graded routes and sand bagging.  Andrew however is not afraid to jam and as such made short work of the line.  On this line he also had to contend with placing gear, which also proved to be no problem as he saunter up the route only occasionally looking a little nervous:

Couldn’t resist another wave image, the winds were holding a steady westerly course keeping the spray off the rock and us.  We were lucky enough a little later in the day to look round at just the right time and see a pod of dolphins surf in one of the clean waves.  One of them even did a big jump out the back of the wave for us.  We stopped and watched for a while but they were heading north and into deeper water, so while it was only a one time show we felt very lucky to have got to see them at least the one time:

While we were down this end of the crag I was looking for something new to do, and my eye was drawn to the arête next to Gargoyle.  I’d looked at from below and above and thought there was a bit of gear low down before the arête really became pronounced.  Above that the shallow and rounded looking horizontal and vertical seams didn’t look like they would offer any more gear.  I was in too minds but Andrew kept indicating we could just escape left if we needed to so I went for it:

Two small tricams fitted beautifully at the base of the arête and as predicted there was nothing above.  Some of the holds looked like they could be loose so on lead it was a little unnerving as I left the gear some way below my feet.  It was luckily never too hard and I ran it out.  So became what I thought about calling Into the Light, just because of the image below and while trying to get a good shot of Andrew the contrast was simply too stark:

For those who a have a keen eye you may notice that on I had done my usual and mucked about with the belay location to get the best images for Andrew following me up.  Managing to achieve a second hanging belay, this one being off the wall to the left of the route.  After not needing to escape left and make use of the crack of Fairy Floss it seemed only right for Andrew to jump on that line.  A neat little climb that I discovered, after reading my own guide, had originally climbed the lower wall the way I had done the new route.  I reckon that was however only to get to the lower shelf, so thought it was still worth writing up the new line:

Most of our time had been spent in the shade, and that along with the fact that it was the first clear sunny day for a while pulled me towards Hope.  In the hope of finding the little carpet python sun bathing atop the flake.  Unfortunately it was not to be and the python was nowhere to be seen on the flake of Hope nor Glory.  Hope was however as always a great climb and today, just for fun, climbed with only a single set of wires:

Time was ticking along and we plumped for one more line, one to even up the leads and so looked for one that would not be too pumpy.  Was it because Andrew wanted something more relaxed, or did I push him towards it so I could carry all the gear out on second… no matter the reason the combination of slippery Slab and First Climb was a great choice.  This allowed us to avoid the steep hike to the top of the cliff with full packs, which usually make my legs ache, and to sort the gear from atop the cliff in the warm sun and with a great view:

We walked out, after yet another great session at Willyabrup, and discussed route names for the new climb and came up with a far better choice of Grotesque.