Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Country Road and bottles of wine 29-Mar-2016 At 2:30:20 PM IdratherbeclimbingM9

Message

On 7/01/2005 climbau wrote:
>The bottle of wine tied to the belay bolts of Country Road at Buffalo (the
>oval area) is said to be a mystery in the guide. Does anyone out there
>know the tale of why the FA's left it there?

11 years later I finally found the answer...

Page 47 of Law Unto Himself (by Michael Law), as part of a photo caption quoting Greg Child...

I left the wine bottle on the belay; no logical reason, other than we did silly stuff then as now.

The photo shows Greg Child falling off the crux of Country Road, with mikl holding it with a casual body belay, along with Nic Taylor also attached to the belay watching events.

Further quote; but this time mikl;

At Mt Buffalo Gorge Nic Taylor found an amazingly clean and smooth roof crack (most Buffalo granite is rounded, crystally, sharp, crumbly and gross), on the south side of the gorge.

Greg, Nic and I rapped into a hanging belay below the crack and worked the hell out of the thing. I solved the roof crux using a hand-fist stack (this technique was named Leavittation ten years later by Randy Leavitt) and pulled around the lip. I'd like to say I stepped off as it was Nic's route, but I was about to fall anyway. On the next shot Nick pulled the lip and then fell; he slipped out of his (slightly loose) Whillans harness and swung upside down with the harness caught behind his knees. He shot up it soon after and Country Road became Australia's first grade 24.

The photo was supplied to mikl from Greg Child collection.
PeterW, since you belayed Nic on the first ascent, was it you who took the photographs supplied?

Another question too if I may; It reads like the second pitch was put up before the first...
Is this the case, or had you done the first earlier?

On a side note: back when Leavittation was first described in a climbing magazine in an article about technique, the full technique (if I recall correctly), also involves obtaining knee jamBs and weird foot-locks to enable re-positioning of hand-fist, or fist-fist stacks.