Reeve's Roadtrip Blog

What a brilliant route! The best route in Victoria? The sustained climbing up the 40m second pitch is simply magnificent. - Sublime Climbs guidebook I try to ignore the hyperbole that often accompanies classic routes. My enjoyment of climbing is linked to many factors, I often love unloved one star gems, and can one three-star classic really be any better than another three-star classic? Anyway, Serpentine is sufficiently classic (oh, and notoriously soft) that I was kind of saving it for the onsight. A pie-on-the-sky dream I'd secretly fantasized over since first seeing photos of it when skiving at work. Well here I am in Australia, so we rented a car to get to the Grampians for the week. I did some other routes on Taipan wall first, great routes themselves like Snake Flake, Fisting Party and Venom. An Aussie climber, Mike, had already had his gear in Serpentine (its mixed bolt and trad protected) for the last few weeks, including the weird first pitch and a jugging pine to the ...

I think that anticipation really adds to my enjoyment of climbing. A lot of my best days out, both at home and abroad, tend to involve fulfilling long-held ambitions, irrespective of the actual difficulty of the route. I’m aware that I start half my writings by saying how I’ve always wanted to do such-and-such a route, which is perhaps indicative of how much it affects my enjoyment of climbing, although I particularly remember the first time I experienced that phenomenon. I was about 15, and had just fought my way to the top of Overhanging Groove at Almscliffe. This gave me a grandstand view of a particularly youthful Andi Turner, questing his way up the adjacent Big Greeny: I was inspired! E3 was talking big numbers to me, and seeing one getting onsighted really fired my imagination. Andi is just a few years older than me, but that was at an age when a couple of years meant a lot. Andi was old enough to have developed adult qualities, like his affableness and humility, th...

Through a serendipitous sequence of acquatintences and coincidences, I managed to hook myself up with a climbing partner for New Zealand. As we had arranged, Tasmanian Garry collected me from Christchurch airport, despite the difficulties associated with recognising someone he'd never met. The ten hour drive south to Fiordland afforded us ample opportunity to upgrade our email friendship to a face-to-face one. The topic of conversation steered itself from climbing, to work, home, family, romance (not that I had much to contribute about that one) and back around to climbing. Suitably introduced, we warmed up with a couple of days sport climbing at the steep and weatherproof crag of Little Babylon. With a good forecast and a days rest, we chose a route called Labyrinth (grade 22, about F6c and 6 pitches) as our first objective in the hills. Due to the compact nature of the rock, many of the mountain routes in this area are protected by a mix of trad gear and minimalist bolting (L...

Tony and I were joined by Andy, a friend Tony met in Edinburgh. We decided to climb Artebelleza on Innominata . It was fun to climb as a three, being more sociable at belays, and Andy fitted in comfortably with our established systems. The day took longer than planned however, a due to a combination of harder climbing than anticipated, the ropes getting stuck four times, and Tony needing to replace half of the rap-stations. Eventually, we reached the floor at dusk, and hurriedly packed our bags. I was warm and no one was above us, so I removed my helmet. We rushed to get down the steep snowy gully, hoping to reach the feint trailhead before darkness fell. Tony was somewhere ahead of Andy and me when an almighty cracking noise echoed from above. A pillar of rock the size of a row of terraces was falling away from the mountain directly above us. I yelled "oh fuck" in disbelief. It was surreal to see, and hard to believe this was about to happen to me. The main body of falli...

(Link to route info: http://www.pataclimb.com/climbingareas/chalten/fitzgroup/mermoz/pilar.html) After climbing Chiaro Di Luna I expressed my intention to sit out my Achilles injury in the chocolateria. In the time it took for the swelling and pain to subside I also managed to visit a myriad of cafes and both ice cream parlours on several occasions. I felt decidedly more fat than fit. Once the ankle was strong enough for me to boulder and sport climb on the outskirts of town, Tony suggested that I hire some strap-on crampons to approach routes in my trainers, thus eliminating the need to wear the boots that aggravated my Achilles in the first instance. With good weather forecast for the Friday, we chose the Red Pillar on Mermoz as our objective. Analysing our previous route together, we felt that the rushed preparation and approach (due to having only just arrived in town) was the main factor in how trashed we had felt for the route. This time, we assured ourselves, would be dif...

(Route topo here: http://www.pataclimb.com/climbingareas/chalten/fitzgroup/exupery/chiaro.html) Tony and I arrived in El Chalten, the gateway town for the Fitz Roy massif, a day into a veritable heatwave. The town, we were told by a local builder, has grown from a collection of 20 families fifteen years ago to its current population of about 1000. This rapid increase is in response to the commensurate increase in the number of people visiting the adjoining Parc Nacional los Glaciares for both walking and climbing. Consequently the town provides a comfortable base, with its myriad of bars and bakeries, and the chocolateria! Tony lamented his lack of shorts in the unexpected heat. We'd been expecting to suffer through atrocious weather in our full-on hardshell gear! We organised ourselves and packed our bags on our first morning in town, wishing we had been able to leave the previous day like everyone else will have done. The few climbers remaining in the valley expressed surpris...

I fondly remember becoming aware of Bishop bouldering by watching the first dosage film, sat in a scruffy student house in Nether Edge. Without access to terrestrial television, Jon, Geth and I would intensely devour any DVD we laid our hands on. Perhaps through a combination of the forced repeated viewing of Sharma, Graham and Rands, and the Zeitgheist that held true in our house (Sharma was the man, Bishop was the place!) a desire to climb in the buttermilks was imprinted in my climbing psyche. Ambition and enthusiasm was then left for several years to mature. For the first few days the climbing felt very alien to me. Weeks of primarily climbing granite cracks had left me unprepared for overhanging crimpfests. It took me equal effort to maintain the discipline to persist through the unfamiliarity without becoming discouraged, yet also to have the self-restraint to avoid going mad and destroying my body on every 5 star line in sight. My enjoyment of the climbing in the Buttermilks...