First in best dressed. While options abound this weekend Mario was first in. Offering a trip to another lonely granite outcrop, buried in the vegetation at the Monadnocks Conservation Park. This meant a longer drive and earlier start to what has occurred for some time, as well as the longest drive since the car having been fixed. This might sound like a broken record but after such a long period of persistent issues, it is hard to put full trust that it has been sorted. My destination, as I got up at three was Pegmatite Crag nestled just below the summit of Mount Cook. We had arranged to meet at six, and there was hardly time to stop and sneeze although I had to take an image of the moon:
On arrival Mario remarked at the splendour of the moon, not being surprised when I told him I took a pit stop to take an image. I waited till the morning light had started to creep into the sky, although sadly the time taken to get a crisp shot was not afforded. The shot still manages to show the 2% waning moon. Looking down on us with a mischievous grin, resembling a Alice in Wonderland like Cheshire cat smile. I have previously mentioned pegmatite when Mario and I visited another crag in this area, being a holocrystalline intrusive igneous rock (https://sandbagged.blog/2023/04/02/over-the-hill/). In layman terms it means it has cooled from its magma state slowly to form large interlocking crystals:
Mario came here some months back with Andreas. Not too long after a recent fires were at their smouldering stage, with smoke slowly rising in some places. The undergrowth was gone and trees had blackened bark. This provided improved lines of sight, even so they still had a bit of trouble in locating the crag. Surprisingly, due to our hot and dry summer, some revegetation was already underway. Not enough to make picking out a path to get to the right general area too difficult. However, when I said the crag was buried in the vegetation I meant it. It is not until you are really close that it is visible. Without knowledge of where it is you would walk straight past it:
This shows the determination of the climbing community of Perth in the day, for hunting out new locations. This was one said to be found by ‘the oldies’. Climbing in Perth kicked off in the mid-60s. This general area was not looked at until the 90s with Pegmatite Crag discovered in 1999, and being fully developed with seventeen lines in less than a year. These crags now sit idle, lost in the trees. The new wave of climbers not having the same vent for adventure. A bush bash to some remote crag, where you’ll find some gnarly trad lines and the occasional well-spaced bolt simply does not hold appeal to them. The few sport lines here make use of just two bolts on a ten meter wall, and would no doubt be complained about:
It was one of these sport lines that encouraged Mario to return, a line that had alluded him on his last visit so he was keen to come back and ‘clean’ the crag. Complaining is not something that Mario and I do when we head out. With the short sharp hike up the slope done, we had a quick recce and got down to business. The gear was pulled out, including my new shoes. It was clear that my old shoes, with their holes in the rubber, would be useless on the Perth granite so I had busted out the news ones. However, somehow I had brought two left feet. I couldn’t recall if I had purchased one or two pairs, so was unsure if the error lay with the provider or me. Fortunately Mario had brought extra shoes, and one of them fitted me:
Despite the name of the crag, the crystals were small making the holds on some lines hard to read. Mario knew most of the tricks from his previous visit, so threw me on lead after lead. This included the excellent Swain in the Wind, a great trad climb named after one of ‘the oldies’. Chris Swain had failed to get the lead, which was then completed by the younger up and coming climbers. As an interesting sideline being his daughter, Kate Swain, was one of the founders of the crag detailed in the post I linked above where I first mentioned pegmatite. And the crag she had established would seem more worthy of the name Pegmatite Crag, but wasn’t discovered until fifteen years later:
It is possible that we had disturbed the above Hairy Pie-dish Beetle (Helea perforata) from its slumber in the leaf litter, where it would normally rest up during the day. This unusually but not uncommon beetle, only found in the southwest of Western Australia, feeds on dead and decaying plant material. The fused wing covers protect it from fangs of spiders and stingers of scorpions. The unusual amour extends over the head, so when feeling threatened it lays flat on the ground and it hard to flip over. We were also fascinated as it attempted to climb a vertical crack line, each time loosing grip and falling back down before going back up. While it tackled this free solo route, I too was drawn to the line below:
The R rated line held appeal. but had me quaking in my odd shoes. The gear was marginal, with reasonably sustained climbing. Two half cams, with the one below being the better one, and the tiniest of wire placements was enough to egg me onwards. Finally a reasonable spot for a mirco cam came, but I then had to run that out by several meters to a nervous mantle. It offered all and more to keep me focused and Mario nervous, as he fed the rope out. In fact every line we did was really engaging, interesting, diverse, and most importantly a lot of fun. We didn’t clean up the crag completely, but managed ten lines including the one that had previously alluded Mario:
The ones we missed all being the lower grade lines, which looked reasonable but didn’t have the same aesthetic appeal. It was however a shame that the line Mario had come back for ended up being the most contrived route of the day. It felt they had attempted to squeeze in a bolted sport route between two obvious features that already provided great climbs. In fact the description tells you to keep out of them, which is possible but didn’t feel natural seeing how close they were. We wrapped up the session on what Mario described as a contrived line, shown below, as it used the same start as the classic Swain in the Wind. I was already gassed and the sun was peeping over the top of the cliff, so I almost declined the offer:
But in his persuasive way, as he reminded me I would to anyone else, Mario convinced me to get on with it. He was sure a specific micro cam would protect the top section, which it didn’t. I didn’t realise I hadn’t brought the right gear with me until it was too late, resulting in another route finishing with two to three meter runout to a slopey top out. Some say these situations are where my strength lies. Whether that is true or not I gingerly made my way up the final moves to polish off a brilliant session at a very fine and worthy crag. Mario remarked he was not likely to return in a hurry, but I could be tempted to come back even if just to climb the lines with a rope above me, as he had today:
Sandbagged 