Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Trip Reports

Tells Us About Your Latest Trip!

Topic Date User

Disco Biscuit (250m 23) - The Epic and The Rematch 2-Jun-2014 At 4:55:35 PM PThomson

Message

THE FLASHBACK:

Sunday - a bit over a week ago -, Neil Monteith and I decided to tackle one of the last notorious big multis at Pierces Pass that he hasn't done, and one that I've been eying off for a while: Mikl's infamous Disco Biscuit - 250m Trad 23.

In reality, our inauspicious start spoke ominously of the likelihood of our success. We met up at Blaxland Station at 0800hrs, later than either Neil of I would ever normally dream of starting a Pierces Pass mulitpitch, never mind merely commencing the drive up the mountain. We got to the Pierces Pass carpark by about 0930, and made it to the base of the climb at 1030. The lateness of our arrival at Disco Biscuit wasn't due to any difficulty in locating it (I've spent a vast amount of time on Pierces Pass East Side in the last 6 months, trying to free the various mini-multipitches I've put up there), but rather because Neil -being Neil- was overwhelmed at the number of lines he hadn't climbed, and the potential for more lines to be added, and me -being me- was only too happy to massage my own ego by showing off my newly freed routes.

The ritualistic 'flip of the rock' landed dark side up (coincidence, or omen?) which meant I had P1. The pitch itself (45m 19) is pretty cool, despite some dubious rock and a horticulturalists’ delight of vegetation. It makes its way up a twin-crack system with a surprising number of 'moves' for the grade, and a pleasant 'adventure-trad' feel to it. Inevitably, though, our prognostication of failure continued when -a few metres up the climb- I broke off a 'bomber' piece of rock and decked back to the starting ledge. The recent fires had baked the bottom of the pitch black, which made the 'shield' of sandstone (normally pretty solid) surprisingly crumbly. Uninjured and unperturbed, I started again and finished the pitch.

Disco Biscuit Pitch 1 (45m 19).

A beautiful Mikl Bash in carrot bolt, and a Male Model in the background.

Pitch 2 is basically just a scramble through a wall of tree, but Pitch 3 (25m 20) starts with a delicate stemming corner to a really high over-driven rusty carrot bolt, then some strange honeycombed rock (with much potential for very dubious 'speed-bump' threads for gear) to the end of the pitch.

Neil cruised it in fine style, and soon I was heading up Pitch 4 (40m 20). Pitches 4-7 is where it turns up the intensity. Almost immediately you start with a boulder-problem to gain an overhanging corner crack (originally graded 22... which the first few moves probably are), it then becomes an enjoyable steep stemming corner with great small gear.

Disco Biscuit Pitch 4 (40m 20/22).

The guide advises to 'continue up the corner then step left into a choss cave, before heading out left to a dangerously run-out but easy arete.' Mikl had advised us to add a bolt to the arete, so we'd been carrying a hand-drill kit with us up the climb for this purpose.

Arriving at the choss cave in question, and upon investigating the arete, I wasn't faced with 'easy, scary climbing' I was faced with 'hard, scary climbing on ironstone micro-edges'. Gear was useless (all the rock just shattered upon loading the gear even slightly) and I came scarily close to committing to the death traverse before finally backing off and building a hanging belay in the corner. Neil was then brought up to save the day. He investigated the death-traverse, decided that a bolt was a wise investment, and then proceeded to spend an hour hand-drilling in a hole (with a blunt drill bit) for his beloved purpose made bash-in carrot (pinched off another climb, somewhere). For posterities’ sake, here is a photo of the fruits of his labour. Feel free to offer opinions on its quality:

His hard yakka finished, Neil committed to the traverse, which essentially became a 6m+ runout on ironstone edges into a steep corner system which seemed more or less unprotected. Unable to see Neil, the only commentary I can offer on the quality and general 'pleasantness' of this traverse was in the amount of cursing that echoed throughout the Grose at that point. Realising that the climbing was both unprotected and much harder than expected, Neil reversed the death traverse (with more cursing) and the two of us came to the conclusion that we must be off-route.

We were now looking at about 2.5 hours of daylight remaining to complete 3 pitches of wandery, scary, chossy, hard-ish trad, so after some debate and hesitation, we decided to bail and come back another day for the rematch. This -necessarily- meant leaving behind a few pieces of gear and rapping ~130m back to the ground. As luck would have it, it was while placing a bomber semi-perma-wire to rap off, that Neil discovered where Pitch 4 ACTUALLY went: It continued further up the (now chossy) corner crack, and traversed left into a choss cave higher up, which could only be SEEN from higher up. In short: his carrot bolt antics had all been for nothing.

And so we retreated, bailing back to the ground with our collective tails between our legs, even as an ambulance helicopter hovered on the other side of the Grose winching up an injured Hanging-Rock-Rope-Swinger (see associated post on this forum for more information on THAT particular epic).

But in our defeat, we vowed that: ONE DAY we would return and reclaim our lost dignity... One day we would have our revenge.

THE REMATCH:

Roughly a week later, unable to live with the shame of our humiliating defeat, Neil and I were back at the base of the climb just after 0800hrs, racked-up and ready to rock. No primitive hand-drills for us, this time we had a Hilti 3.4kg 36v battery-powered drill to add/replace the bolts as requested by Mikl (thanks for the loan, JengA).

We'd decided to swap out leads (so essentially we were both getting a 'tick' on the first 4 pitches), and quickly raced up Pitches 1-3 (adding a bolt each to the belays at the end of Pitch 2 and Pitch 3 to replace the corroding old carrots).

Me on the stemming corner start of Pitch 3 (30m 20) of Disco Biscuit.

As Neil gunned up Pitch 4, he deviated to remove our red-herring carrot from the previous aborted attempt. For nostalgia value, here's a photo of it in the choss cave we ALMOST traversed out of:

Continuing up to the CORRECT cave, Neil added the requested bolt, and blasted up the much easier and much less deathy arete to finish up the pitch.

I've described this climb as being best defined as: 'a line of "okay" rock up a sea of superchoss'. The below picture (on the belay at the end of Pitch 4) epitomises this:

Pitch 5 (25m 23) is probably the only 'sporty' section of climbing on the whole route. It goes up a vague corner, then via some trad runouts (on easier but chossy ground) to a bolt protected sporty move, just above where I am in the picture below:

<