In the last post I mentioned that in mid September Leanne and I were heading to the Grampians for a short vacation. Obviously there was more to September for me than that trip, but for the most part it was just the standard fair of working and occasional climbing without anything too noteworthy occurring, so for this blog I will focus my attention solely on our trip to the mainland.
To succinctly describe the trip, it was awesome. It was really nice to get away for a few days, the weather was excellent, and the scenery was beautiful.
Spring was in full effect and the wildflowers were out in force. It seemed like every single plant had a flower on it, and some of them smelled incredible.
We took two trips to areas we hadn't visited on our last visit: Mt Arapiles and the Victoria Range. We didn't climb at Arapiles, just walked around and checked the place out. It's mostly a destination for traditional route climbing of moderate difficulty, however there are a few things I think I would like to climb and I fully intend to spend some more time there in the future,
although I'm a bit dubious about spending too much time in a place where apparently the 80's still hold so much sway
On a rest day we did some wine touring similar to on our previous trip with Mike and Tammy, which was also nice, but mainly we went bouldering. Lots of bouldering. The boulders are some of the best quality I've ever seen and it's rare that I go to a place and choose bouldering over climbing longer routes, but this place is one of those. I was pretty out of shape, being a strict weekend warrior in Tasmania, so I spent most of my time getting back into shape so to speak by climbing lots of easy to moderate boulders, although I did manage to get up a few harder ones as well, and tried a good number of harder problems that I didn't finish. If I couldn't do them in a couple tries I moved on. There were so much good climbing to be done that I didn't want to bother fixating on one (or a limited few) problems but rather do as many different climbs as possible. In our 6 days of bouldering I did about 35 problems between V5-V10 and a similar number of problems between V2-V4, almost all of which were of the highest quality and really enjoyable to climb. Leanne did a lot of problems too, and between us we climbed well over a hundred problems and 500 V-points of Grampians classic boulders. It was probably one of the most enjoyable weeks of bouldering I've ever had:
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| Lightning Arete (V7) |
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| 4:45 (V4) |
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| 100 lbs Club (V10) |
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| Damsel (V3) |
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| Caves Club area, top of Mt Stapylton |
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| Cave's Club (V10) |
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| Whipped Cream (V7) |
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| Dra Di (V3) |
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| The Snakepit area |
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| Volume 1000 (V4) |
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| Topout Volume 1000 |
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| Snakepit roof |
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| Caterpillar (V3) |
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| Caterpiller |
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| High Flyer (V9) |
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| Waiting in the Air dyno (V7) |
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| Out of the Bleu (V5) |
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| Out of the Bleu |
As is usual on our expeditions we saw some interesting wildlife, and even after being here in Australia for more than a year now I still find the uniqueness of the fauna very striking.
On one of our last days we met our friend Craig from Adelaide at the Tiapan wall and did a few routes, although Leanne wasn't so enthused about the style and I can't say I was exactly in the mood to deal with "sport" climbs where half the gear is traditional protection. Still, I did do a classic route called Tyranny (8a) in a couple tries which was pretty good and managed to get up Venom (7c+) first try after our friend Craig placed the gear and gave me all the beta (thanks Craig!).
Now I'm back at work, but with our daylight saving in effect I hope to get out a bit more during the week if I can find the time (I've got some upcoming deadlines that might stymie those plans). I turned 30 years old yesterday, had a nice party and took a brewery tour. We'll see how this next month goes, but for now that's all I got. Till next time-
