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TR - Mt Buffalo Southside Gorge FA 25-Apr-2018 At 11:29:32 AM Wendy

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i go and have shoulder surgery, and chockstone produces its most interesting 2 threads of the past 5 years for me. fantastic!

i had eyed off this line before. i mumbled about making plans to do it with singersmith or even m9. But the tradition of the moment is that other people jump on lines i'm thinking about whilst im injured :(. Geoff was toproping a route on the pharos i'd been planning on doing this summer the other day. if you believe in karma, you might be amused that he clonked himself in the head with a hold he ripped off. and chris destroyed his harness on this one ... and his shoulder by the sounds of things. shoulder surgery sucks, Chris. my commiserations.

i think we can safely say i wouldn't have lead the thing if there wasn't any gear smaller than a valley giant in it. maybe singersmith might. if i can ever overcome the challenges of getting this shoulder better, getting fit again, and probably the greatest of them all, finding someone who wants to climb it with me, i'd happily clip the bolts. I'm not entirely sure i'd have been comfortable placing them, and i probably would have just left it with a tr myself, but i'm ambivalent about it enough to appreciate them should i ever get on it.

I really doubt that the bolts will excite a new generation off width climbers though. Almost all climbers won't be able to do enough moves to even get between the bolts. If the ease of putting a tr on cacophonic crack hasn't brought the masses to the delights of offidths, 4 bolts in a harder, dirtier offwidth at the top of a long pitch of crack climbing isn't going to either. Chris and Tim are just special climbers :)

What disturbs me more is the sideline mention of highlining anchors appearing all over the place at Buffalo. So now i'll go over to the other thread to have a little rant about those.