(Re)developing Pierces Creek

Canberra is home to an abundance of good climbing, mostly on granite, long multipitch slabs, and a lot of boulders.

The main bouldering area for the last decade has been Black Range - an hour away, past Queanbeyan. Black range comprises numerous areas of great problems spread throughout the gums.

Originally developed at a similar time was Pierces Creek, despite being much closer (~20 mins) it faded into obscurity due to the 2003 Canberra fires, which destroyed the pine forest, and damaged many of the problems. I had a look out there a few times, between '08 and '10, but found limited areas, with no traffic, a lot of cleaning required and a lot of chipped holds in some areas. Having not visited it prior to the fires I didn't realise the quality problems  I was missing.

Over the last year or so it has seen a resurgence. The old maps were translated into google maps on theCrag, published in Duncan's guide, and a few areas were cleaned up and redeveloped for publishing. Seeing some more activity out there I had another look, and found that a lot of it is nicer than I had first thought. This coincided with Veronica and I acquiring Maddie, which limits our climbing to dog legal, if not friendly locations. Pierces falls into that category, and is one of only a few local areas that do.

I can also climb out there solo (with the dog), so it's been a popular spot over the summer when my usual partners bail.

My work has been mostly around the Sushi Row area, putting up and writing about 30 new routes. I've also helped Peter out with some grading and cleaning at the Tumblers. Combined with the pre-existing work at Playboy, there are now about 150 problems in close proximity, Ranging from VB to ~V9, with single move problems and sweet high-balls in good condition.

I'm going to continue developing the main loop, to get a decent number and density of problems, before heading west as I get bored of each area. I've already found a few new areas that haven't been looked at as far as I am aware, which could hold some interesting problems, and there will be more coming as I teach Maddie to follow a mountain bike over the coming months. There's definitely more than enough to keep us busy for the foreseeable future. Keep an eye on theCrag to see what's happening out there.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hypotheticals from a hypocrite

There's a lot of blame at a time like this, there are the classic armchair critics saying that what happened was stupid, like they've never cut a corner or taken a risk. (Quite possible for the TR tough guys out there). We all say 'check your knot', wear a helmet, and all of the rest, and in most cases I'm an advocate of this. I'm also likely to solo across a ledge, unclip my safety to deal with a tangle on my anchor, and not use an autoblock to save a few minutes, and in summer I regularly choose to mitigate the certainty of sunburn rather than the possibility of rockfall.    In this case, the more details that came out, the more I went from "FFS, A simul-rapping accident on a big wall with no knots?" to "I can see a way for this to happen" using a logical train of occurrences and decisions that most pragmatic, and not risk-averse climbers could understand if not agree with.  I've done all of these things, I've seen this behavior
Read more

Butterfly Wall Direct

Image
For the first time in my life I've actually been applying myself to training for something, it's been about 10 weeks since I started an aperiodized climbing training plan, based loosely on Steve Bechtel's Logical Progression .  The basic premise is that you rotate between the three types of sessions, progressing them all simultaneously, rather than peaking and letting each of them fall in turn.  The results seem to be pretty good, I'm climbing harder than I ever have before, and am seeing benefits in all three areas.  Finger strength and general strength is improving (so surprising given that I've never done any lifts before)  My on route endurance is improving, and my ability to apply power is increasing as well.  I still struggle with setting goals, but one route that I've been keen on doing for years is Butterfly Wall Direct (24) at Nowra. I first had a look at it in January this year, and the moves felt surprisingly doable. I spent another
Read more

Trango Vergo, Review and Recalls

March  I've finally bitten the bullet and purchased an autoblock belay device, Actually, thats not quite true. I've had a Gri Gri for years, but it's used solely for tensioning slacklines. I've never liked the way they operate, I can't feed slack well enough with them, and with the exception of the times when someone is dogging a route, I've rarely found that the ATC guide isn't sufficient. You never short rope anyone, and give a better belay in general. However getting a rock dropped on me a few months ago has got me looking at alternatives, I've now got a MegaJul for cases where the rock is concerning. But it too struggles to pay out rope as nicely as I'd like if someone is going for a hard send on good rock. We'll see how the Vergo goes, everything I've heard about it suggests that it's a gri gri, but a little better. If it addresses a few of the gri gri issues I may use it a fair bit, if not, it will still be useful when someone
Read more