Curl Curl Adventures

With a name like Curl Curl Beach you know there is going to be adventure and today was an especially good day for it.  The weather was warm and overcast but turned mostly clear by noon.  The tide was quite high when we got to the beach which caused us to spend most of our walk running from the large waves that would sporadically crash above our knees and threaten to get our pants wet.

We eventually made our way to the pool located on the northern end of the beach situated along the rock wall of the cove.  To everyone back home this might seem some what strange that there is a pool right here next to the ocean, but the Ozzie's have them on almost every established beach near a city (they have a north and south pool on Curl Curl beach).  They are a very ingenuous designs that consist of a cement wall that encloses a portion of rock and is filled by waves and tide water that rush in.  Each pool is also designed to be self refreshing since there are periodic grates in the wall that allow excess water to drain out as the seas pore more in, this also maintains a constant pool depth which is sufficient to swim laps in.

Leighton and I continued on past the ocean pool only stopping to deposit our backpacks and fellow companion, Alina.  We than continued on up the ocean side scrambling over sandstone boulders and wading through rock pools until we found a likely place where we could scale the cliff face.  Typically climbing sandstone can be very dangerous for two reasons.  Sandstone usually wares in a very smooth fasion making it very difficult to climb and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it is a sedimentary rock made of millions of little sand grains that are held together.

This means that in most cases pinches or ledges that look really solid and thick will break off in your hands with any force applied. Don't worry mom this sandstone was safe...ish.  The sandstone that we climbed on was not nearly as brittle as other types I have experienced, and most holds could easily withstand the weights and forces Leighton and I were applying.  We were also very careful and tested each hold before trusting it, but I digress (I have always wanted to use that in a sentence :D).  The weather and ocean had eroded very crazy honeycomb patterns in the cliff face that made infinite possibilities when climbing.

After sending (climbing term) our first mild section that left us on a ledge about 40ft off the ground, we found a tight crawl that looked like it could possibly lead to another ledge.  Leighton led under the pinch point and up a slight incline, that was sketchy due to the amount of loose sand that had piled up on it, and onto another in cut ledge where we found quite a surprise.  Laying behind a slight rise and protected from the elements by and overhang was a cliff side bungalow.  Not a house by any means but all the necessities a lonely fisherman would need to camp out on the cost including the head of Ong-Bak (that's right Mitch I found it),  for those that don't know its a Buddha head.  We did not want to disturb the house of another person so we tried to quickly move on, but this find made us consider going back to make a camp out of our own sometime in the near future.

We continued down our ledge for a few hundred more feet with only slight scrambling and elevation changes until we came to a nice scramble dihedral rising above us.  For the those non-climbers a dihedral is corner in the rock that is greater than 90 deg. where two wall faces come together so that you can use the holds on each wall.  By using the great sandstone features we were able to climb up into the dihedral and found another very interesting artifact.  What looked like a metal stake that was driven into the corner of the wall.  It does not quite match the looks of a typical climbing piton, but it must have been there for some reason, and all Leighton and I could decide on was it may have been used in the past to lower off of by someone surveying the coast.  At that same location we discovered a very cool looking overlook that hung suspended in air above the rocks and waves some 150ft bellow, so of course I had to scramble out onto it and get a photo.

From there it was a pretty simple process of scrambling and climbing in order to reach the top of the cliff and look out over Manly and the sea.  I have always enjoyed the view from the top of climbs,  they always have a great vista to look at but there is also a since of accomplishment and pride that goes along with it.  This climb was no different and only fed my urge to head to the Blue Mountains and get on some real climbing pitches.

You can see all my pictures on my picasa page.