Australia 3: Tasmania to Jindabyne

After we finished the Totem Pole, we set to exploring the as much of Tasmania as we could. We went to Port Arthur, the old prison town which is now a historical site, which was actually quite interesting, then headed back to camp at Fortescue Bay again so that we could try to see some Fairy Penguins. They're as cute as their name implies, but we waited in the wrong spot and missed them at dusk, so we only saw them by headlamp. Oh well. The next day was a 10 pitch 220m 23 called I've Heard it all Before on Mt. Brown. You hike the mountain, then rappel down the face until you clip in just above the ocean and swells, if it's low tide and the swell is down, and climb back up the face. It was a stellar route, with a little rotten rock here and there. That seemed to be a theme for the climbing in Tasmania, great climbing, if you can handle poor rock quality. We finished our Tas tour up near Launceston for some wine tasting and Nath insisted we hit the Cadbury Chocolate on our last morning. Now it was time to go back to Arapiles!

We blitzed through Melbourne this time, and met Lazar, Derek's friend, in Horsham where he kindly picked us up late at night. The next few weeks were spent climbing with Lazar. Both he and Nath progressed quickly while they were there. Lazar was consistently onsighting 21 by the time we left, and Nath was able to onsight a 22 by the time we left. It was fun watching them improve and get better. I spent a lot of time on routes in the 23-25 range. I have to say that the 23's at Arapiles were difficult to say the least. They were often runout, sustained, difficult to protect where there was gear, and were just damn hard! I think I did every three star 23 at Arapiles by the time I left, and was challenged on every one of them! Some were crazy, like the 15m traverse under a roof, or the one with a single micro stopper in about 10m of HARD face climbing. I didn't do much improving at Arapiles, because the hard routes aren't high quality, and they often were complicated to get to. I tried a few on TR and lead, but didn't go through the trouble of leading any of them clean. Instead, I finally got my wish and we headed to The Grampians!

It had been such bad weather at Arapiles before Tasmania we didn't go to the Grampians once. The weather is worse over there since the mountains are higher. We had a few days of clouds and no wind, so we headed to the Grampians for two days. The first was great since Nath got her first grade 21 onsight on gear after the sun set. By the time she was through the crux it was pretty dark so Lazar and I were climbing by headlamp! I managed to onsight a 25 and generally enjoyed myself on more pure crack climbing at the wall we were at. More importantly for me though, was going to Taipan wall. We only had one day there, since Nath and Lazar couldn't climb anything there and it was so far away from where we were camping that I never made it out there with anyone else. They patiently spent a day belaying, or in Nath's case reading. Lazar TR'd the two routes that I did, and got a hell of a workout. My two goals on Taipan wall were onsight Mr. Joshua, a wickedly sandbagged 25, and try Serpentine, one of the best routes in the world with a lofty grade of 29! Well, I onsighted Mr. Joshua after a more than one hour battle. I found every awkward rest I could and it was still as desperate as anything I've ever done in my life. When I finished the route, I ended up on a ledge huffing and puffing so tired I couldn't clip the anchors for over 2 minutes I was so tired! After that one, I headed next door to Invisible Fist, a harder route rated 26. While the hardest moves were harder, there were fewer of them, and I actually found this one easier than Mr. Joshua! It was my 2nd 5.12c onsight of the trip! After that, we neaded back to Arapiles for the rest of our climbing since the weather was rather bad.

Back in Arapiles, Nath was steadily progressing. She managed to work her way up to redpointing 21 and onsighting up to grade 20, until our last day. On our last day, she managed to onsight a three star (highly recommended) 22 in a brilliant effort! We had decided that the next day it was time to move on and we headed back to camp to prepare for our morning departure. Lazar, who had been in Arapiles longer than us, was also ready to move on to warmer climates and so he offered to give us a ride to our next destination - Jindabyne! We hopped in the car in the morning after tearing down a campsite full of memories, and headed off.

We were in Lazar's car he had bought cheap when we got to Australia, and the fun quickly began. After a few hours, we got a flat tire and the wheel was fused in some way to the car! There was no one around, of course, so Lazar and I whacked on it with a brick a bit. Eventually, Lazar figured out that we had to whack it from behind, so reached under the car and with one good swing the tire was off! We changed the tire after a funny delay, and drove to the next town to buy a new tire. After that, we were pulled over by the police for having a light out which we had to stop and fix. It was rather funny. We didn't make it to Jindabyne until around midnight due to all the delays. At this point, Lazar dropped us off and headed north to another climbing area called Frog Buttress near Brisbane where we would be meeting up with him in a couple of weeks.