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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

WA the Final Frontier 9-Jun-2007 At 11:07:12 PM Onsight

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On 9/06/2007 ecowain wrote:
>... Has anyone climbed on Chatham Island before it became
>off-limits? The east face of that was always mesmorising for me from the
>shore opposite.

I spent a week on Chatham Island a few years ago, on an Australian Geographic expedition with Greg Mortimer, Howard Whelan and several WA climbers. It was a fantastic place, stunning, really fun to explore.

This was organised with the Parks Dept, apparently getting permission was tricky. We helped get several rangers/scientists get on the island so that they could check if a particularly rare fern could still be found. It has a very limited habitat and is only found on Chatham and one other island and the no-one had been on Chatham for years to check if it could still be found there. Happily there was plenty to be found. With that out of the way the rest of us hooked into the climbing. Good granite; but a fraction rough and crumbly to call superb. There’s some really good looking cliffs but I thought the potential was limited. The others did some good looking routes, some of several pitches. I put up a nice 22 arête with Gordon Brysland, on the other side of the pinnacle to the route in the photo below, placing four bolts which I then later removed. I don’t think our group left any bolts at all; it seemed to make sense given no one was likely to be climbing there again for years… Getting on and off the island was difficult; especially getting off as the weather closed in and the swell got rough; thank lord Greg is a zodiac magician.

All up a great experience. This is the only photo I’ve currently got scanned in.