The Block

Finally I have been able to climb.  The weather was good and both Leighton and I had the day off so we got our gear together, called our friend Tyler, and caught the train up to the Blue Mountains.  We had climbed a bit at "The Wave Wall" outside of Blackheath the week before, but decided to try a new area we had read about in the guide book that was near to the town of Medlow Bath. 
I'm not sure how the small blip on the highway got the name of Medlow Bath, but it turns out there is quite a bit of climbing in the very close vicinity to the train station.  We ended up at a place called "The Block" which was only about a ten min walk and consisted of around six climbs all grades between 17-23, which is around 5.9-5.11c ish when using the Yosemite decimal system.  The first climb that I led was rated at a 17 that traversed up and to the right and than followed an arete up to the ring bolts at the top.  It was not as easy as I thought it would be although most of the difficulty came from being unable to determine where the suitable holds were.

Leighton on "Old Salt"

We than proceeded onto a three star 18 called "Old Salt" that climbed strait up the cliff face with quite nice holds.  I really liked this rout because it required you to think about your feet a lot, but allowed really good holds to clip off of, in all I actually think it was easier than the 17 that I led first even though it was rated harder.

A very common climbing practice in Australia is providing bolts that are set into the wall, but lack any hanger to clip your quickdraws into.  For this reason most Aussies climb with five or more bolt plates that are designed to slip over the bolt on the wall and provide a location to clip your quickdraw.  Since we had no bolt plates this cut out quite a few routs that we could climb at "The Block", but luckily we met up with some older climbers that allowed us to barrow two bolt plates so that I could lead the two star 20 named "Strange Karma".  This was an exceptionally fun rout to climb as it started with a nice finger crack (crack is about the width of your fingers) that led to a small roof.  After the roof there were a few big moves to large jugs that required funky foot placements and drop knees and ended with a some what mantel move up onto a small ledge.  It also had three bolts requiring bolt plates that I was able to play around with, which added to the difficulty and excitement by requiring me to attach not only a quick draw and rope while hanging from one hand, but also fishing a bolt plate out of my chalk bag and sliding it carefully onto the exposed bolt.

Leighton on "Strange Karma"

With both Leighton and Tyler climbing each of these routes after me, the day was mostly spent so we proceeded to a ledge lookout where we could watch the sunset on the Blue Mountains and relax away the last little bit of the day until our train to Sydney arived.

The trip back to Sydney was much more hecktec than we had planned on however...

We arrived at the Medlow Bath station moments to late to catch the train to the city so we were required to whittle away another hour on the platform before our next train arrived.  Now the Medlow Bath station is in the middle of nowhere with only one car shop and one store near enough to see and both of these were already closed for the night, but luckily Leighton found a golf ball on the train tracks and Tyler was able to find a short plank of wood in the gutter so we improvised our own game of Cricket to occupy us until our train came.

When we finally boarded our train to Sydney it was about 9:00 pm which would put us back home by around 11:30 pm just in time to go to bed, unfortunately things did not work out so well on the train.  After six or seven stops the train conductor announced that we would be held up at Woodford station because there was a "Police Operation" at the next station.  We have no idea what a "Police Operation" at a train station entails, but there were many guesses throughout the night that ranged from someone jumping in front of a train to a bomb threat on the train station, needless to say we spent two hours at Woodford waiting for the train to continue on but to our dismay they told us that the train would be going no further and that they had arranged buses to get us back to the city.  We left the train and waited on the side of the highway for ten min until a small tour bus arrived, and after much packing of people into the small cab, we continued on down the road to Springwood station which was beyond the area of incident.  Along the way we were able to see many police lights flashing around one station and people swarming over the platform and general vicinity, which reminded me very much of pandemic movies where there is a quarantine area and lots search lights and military men and such.  We were stuck at Springwood another half hour or more until they could arrange transportation for us to continue on to the city.  This meant that we did not make it back to Sydney until two in the morning and since all the trains and buses to Frenches Forest end at midnight this left us high and dry with nowhere to sleep.  Fortunately Tyler lived only a 20min walk from Central Station and he offered us his couch for the night, without him it would have been a much more uncomfortable night to say the least.
I hope that Leighton and I can get back to the Blue Mountains at least a few more times before we head down the Grampions four our little trip.  I would like to get my hands back into the feeling of climbing and work out my endurance so that I can lead some longer routs.