The Moai

The weekend after New Years was hot; too hot to do any serious rock climbing. Nevertheless, Leanne and I felt like getting out and doing something, so we headed down to the Southeast part of the Island to check out the Moai. The Moai is a free-standing pillar of dolerite similar to the Totem Pole that juts out of the Tasman Sea. If differs from the Tote in that it's a little shorter, isn't hemmed in by other cliffs, and can be reached (at least most of the time) on foot by walking out to the end of a rocky point just above sea level. We thought it might be a good option for a hot weekend as we presumed it would be cooled by windy sea breezes, none of the routes on it were technically very difficult, and the hike in was reportedly quite nice and shaded by trees nearly the entire way. The approach starts out on a 1/4 mile of sandy beach before you pick up the forest.

The trail generally follows the coast and is quite pleasant. You walk through Eucalypt forest with undergrowth of large ferns and pass a few calm bays on along the way, one of which had part of an old wreck protruding from the water.

After a while the trail gained some elevation as the coast became lined with cliffs. The trail takes you to the top of these cliffs from which you have to do some rappelling/downclimbing to access the pinnacle. It's called the Moai after the monolithic human figures of Easter Island, although this particular sculpture happens to be a natural creation without human resemblance. Still, when you walk up to the cliff and see it, it's pretty inspiring.

Here's a few short videos I took with my iphone and then spliced together which starts at the trail at the cliff edge, shows the last part of the down climb to reach the pillar, and a quick shot when I was standing on the top after climbing it.

The climbing was pretty good. We did a two nice routes, a  6c+ and a 7a+, which were the main lines. The bottom of the 6c+ was a bit wet from sea spray, but I still thought it was a good route.  

There was also an easier 6b+ route we didn’t get a chance to do because the waves were starting to come up and threatened to swamp us.  Thunder storms were also rolling in, so we decided to pack it up and get out before the rains came. We scrabbled out up the cliffs and headed the 4 miles or so back along the trail to the car quite satisfied with the day’s adventures. The rains started coming down just after we reached the car, so we had timed it perfectly.

That’s all I have for now, but I’ve got more images from a climbing trip we did down to the Hobart area with a couple of friends this past weekend that I will post within the next week, so keep an eye out-