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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

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Biggest sandbag 21-Feb-2014 At 12:37:34 PM prb

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I think Dramp is a well-protected one-move wonder at 20/21. Dylan’s hard to grade – I talked a mate onto it who’s close to 2m tall and climbs mid-20s. He fell in the awkward bit about 5m up then got stuck in the upper chimney and couldn’t move! I avoided mentioning gnarly cracks like Hyaena, they all feel like sandbags to someone with poor technique like me.

Wendy mentions Kneedeep Chimney at Moonarie which can be a terrific sandbag, but not because of the grade. There’s a big choke of chockstones about 60m up that you can avoid by heading to the front of the chimney and continuing at solid Moonarie grade 15. But the original line (14 I think) caves up through the chockstones to a very tight exit onto a ledge. I’m not big but I have to take everything off my harness to (just) squeeze through. Thin climbers with a sadistic streak could have a lot of fun.

The biggest sandbags I’ve come across are among those old climbs at Moonarie. Black Man’s Reach (13) is ridiculous – looping out onto the Sweeping Statement slab at grade 20 is way easier. But The Black Hole of Calcutta (8) on Checkers Wall takes the cake. The aim is survival. There’s some hard climbing at the grade through vegetation and a deadly steep boulder field, a crawl along one of those poorly protected scoopy ledge systems you get on Checkers, a leap across the void to grab a bush and finally a fully-enclosed tight dark chimney that no-one’s been in for decades. We piked it and went up the front of the buttress at about grade 16.