Snooze you lose

After the long thirty-two hour trip back from the homelands, this morning was day two of waking up in Western Australia time.  It felt much harder to rouse and get going today than it did yesterday.  As a person who is normally up early and ready to go as soon as I wake up, it is a strange feeling to roll out of bed at six and feel like all I want to do is crawl back into it.  No doubt within a day or two the body clock will be back to the old routine.  Today, however I had arranged to head out for a climb and as such I had no choice but get moving:

The destination was the furthest crag from home in the south west and most southerly in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park.  Cosy Corner, being an hour a half drive away.  During which, after the narrow, winding, pot-holed, and high stonewall-sided country lanes I bombed about with the folks on just last week, even the country roads felt like highways.  Easily wide enough to allow two cars to pass by each other without so much of a hint of worry.  Some may be doing the maths, it is after all summer, and yes you are right:

It was a later than usual start for me.  The agreed 8am commencement time had been organised with Rod.  His request and for reasons that made sense, plus it allowed me in my sluggish state to feel ready for action when I arrived.  You may recall Darby, who I climbed with at Moses Rocks just before my visit to the homelands to see the folks.  Well he had bumped into Rod during a climbing trip to the south coast, and after getting chatting he mentioned to Rod that I had just released a bunch of mini-guides for the south west:

One being Cosy Corner, which so happens to be Rod’s local crag.  The lucky bugger lives a short ten minute drive down the road.  On learning about the mini-guide he reached out, letting me know that he has been cleaning the place up.  Having recently got back into roped climbing, as opposed to just pebble pinching, he’d been visiting the crag regularly.  And clean-up he did.  Not just in bagging heaps of new routes, which led me to updating the mini-guide, but also picking up all the litter and broken glass left by careless tourists and visitors:

He had put up lines at various locations along the main face, and a stack of some fifteen or so at an area he named the Crystal Palace.  The face can be seen in the second image, and it includes a fat quartz vein above the black Anorthosite base.  This is up to a meter deep in some parts, and is where the name came from.  Howsie and I have often looked at this wall and pondered whether to play on it.  Each time having instead gone to the other cleaner looking parts of the main area, where we have managed to bag a number of first ascents:

Not however as many as Rod had.  And this led to he and I organising a catch-up at his local crag, where he offered to point out some of the lines.  The climbs at the crystal palace have not been individually included in the mini-guide, the area has merely been given a mention stating that all the likely lines have been climbed.  As the images suggest it is a broken face.  Ramps and ledges, break up the steeper sections.  These offer mini-expedition type lines, as opposed to the more sustained routes that most ‘modern’ climbers seek:

And when I say the ‘modern’ climbers, I mean those who tend to have come out of the gyms with prowess and glory being the goal.  As opposed to the old school trad climbers who head outdoors to absorb the whole adventure.  Rod, like me, is of the latter sort.  As such we both lapped up the climbs, with their varied climbing despite the grades being relatively low.  Rapping down and then climbing out, relishing the grippy rock and gear placements, until the sun started to pop over the top of the cliff and the tide below began to lap at our feet:

Even with the late start this allowed us to get six very fun climbs in.  With plenty more to sample, but that will be for another time.  Maybe Howsie and I should have jumped on this gem of an area, but we snoozed and lost out.  Before we left Rod was keen to point out a particular route, one that is in the mini-guide and called Neptune’s Trident.  I am definitely keen to jump on it, on a calmer ocean day.  Wandering along to the vantage point a Southern Heath Monitor (Varanus rosenbergi) lazily walked across our path, topping off a wonderful morning out: