Sunday, January 20

Bouldering at Granite Island

I've spent a while mulling over this in order to decide whether I hated climbing at Granite Island, Victor Harbour. And I finally decided that I actually really liked it. Despite the rough granite with many many crystal pebbles in it. And despite the fact that most of the times, your spotter is considering wearing a helmet because of all the pebbles that you are sending down while climbing. And the fact that sometimes you might step on something and then fly off the route because your foothold just broke. Or, as in D.'s case, come down off the route really quickly because the super solid undercling you were holding as your start just came off. Nevertheless, one thing that is most cool is that the problems are not very high, and that the landings are pretty clean! More info including topos and route descriptions can be found here.

The problems are interesting and tend to be in the slab, mental kind of area - my favorite! NOTT! In terms of difficulty, the ones we tried ranged between V0 and V2, with a lot of mental stealth with respect to footholds and handholds coming off.


Here's me on something called Plumber's Crack (I wonder why!)




This is one of my favorite problems so far. Trust Issues, V2, Umbrella boulder. Start on some footsies under the crack. The name says it all: delicate footers over a bulging slab to a slopey finish. Clean landing either on D or on Stalin and some spiky bushes to finish it off.

 Psyched and scared to death at the same time.



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