There was a chance that I would have been flying solo this weekend. That was until late in the week, when both Mario and Rongy’s partners made plans that didn’t include them leaving them free to play. Rongy decided on the Northern Blocks of Wilyabrup, which I was more than happy with. Partly because we rarely see other climbers here, and never when we have been climbing ourselves. Plus during Mario and my last trip here we spotted a possible new line, which I was keen to check out:
On arrival at the top of the cliff, we stopped for a while to check out the dolphins that were cruising past with young in tow. We were also almost convinced we saw a whale, but due to the distance it was hard to be sure. The Southern Right Whales are on their migration south and we were hoping to see some today, aided by a calm ocean that would make it easier to spot them. But sadly, we didn’t spy any more confirmed or unconfirmed sightings. We did however get to watch the dolphins for quite some time as they played in the bay just to the north of us, which was very cool:
In the words of Apollo Creed when he trained Rocky Balboa, I would say that I would say that of the three of us Mario is the one with the “eye of the tiger”. So it wasn’t too hard for us to get him to take the first lead. Both Rongy and I were thinking this was a good thing, as it would then be Mario that risked getting a flash pump on the first route, allowing us to chill out a bit more with the rope above us. This is exactly what happened, but he also has sufficient experience keeping his cool and finding stances to rest up enough to avoid taking a fall:
The flash pump risk is heightened here as there really are no good warm up routes. They are all a tad steep, a little bit pumpy, and fairly sustained. So I was a little surprised Rongy picked this place for a climb considering his lack of consistent appearances on rock over winter. He even jumped on the sharp end for the next route. Taking on a line I climbed for the first time during my last visit here not that long ago. Never really too hard, but thin and balancy in sections with the spaced gear making for some exposed sections, requiring Rongy to also draw on his experience and keep his cool:
Last night Lisa and I had headed up the road to see the neighbours, as it has been a long time since we have caught up. Something that seems to happen over winter, as people bunker down that bit more. It was intended to be a short hello, and as is usually the case with them it wasn’t so short and also resulted in me having a slightly woolly head this morning. To the point I suggested to Mario and Rongy they might like to take the leads. They however were having none of it, resulting in all my talk about the possible new line while organising the trip backfired on me:
Mick and his son appeared just as they were steering me towards the rock, so I left them chattering as I started. The line links two routes but has a traverse of sufficient length to make it worth investigating. The first route to get to the traverse I knew well, but I have never been on the second route that it finished up. This was due to the lower section of that climb being harder than anything I would tackle. The traverse got more overhung and pumpy as I moved leftwards, and I was almost off as I got myself into the corner of the second line that would take up upwards. I’m really not sure how I held on but I did:
Both Mario and then Rongy followed up and agreed it was a great climb. I suggested a solid pumpy grade 19, but as each of them joined me at the belay and without hesitation they both suggested it was worthy of grade 20. Knowing my propensity to not want to over grade routes, which has led to people claiming a number of my climbs are sandbags, I’ll go with the grade 20. It was my turn to catch up with Mick as Marion took the next lead and hopefully one day we might organise to climb together, as opposed to just randomly bumping into each other:
After following after Mario, Rongy, weary from a 45km mountain bike ride the day before and also admitting to not having the stamina to sustain climbing these steeper lines, decided to sit out the next two routes. Content with laying down to close his eyes and soak up the warmth of the sun, scanning the ocean out to the horizon just in case a whale might appear, occasionally looking down the cliff to see how we were going, and also checking to see if the two boulderers below us managed to battle their way up the pebbles. Despite just kicking back for the last part, we had all thoroughly enjoyed just being out:
Sandbagged 