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Easter Trip Reports - post'emhere! 7-Apr-2010 At 5:29:53 PM Guniea Sauras Rex

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We’d heard about the Buelah Rock Festivus from a mate of ours. Being considerably closer than the Grampians or Arapiles and only having four days off work, the option to go on a four day rock climbing festival sounded tailor made.

Beulah is (or was – Cliff the owner doesn’t run the farm as a commercial venture anymore) a sheep station about 80km west of Armidale. Cliff Axelsen is an artist and sculptor – he’d grown up in the area and when he heard that the station was for sale. After a few false starts at running cattle and sheep he sold the bulk of his 25-30 square kilometres of pastoral land and kept the really good bits – the bits with the granite and trees.

After hitting a few spots for mountain biking along the way to Buelah (Tip #1: Avoid the Pacific Hwy at Easter – Bulahdelah is a bottleneck with a 10km traffic jam. Tip #2 AMB magazine cannot be trusted for directions to get to the trails) we were greeted by Todd, the festival coordinator, who promptly served us pizza and beer. He then preceded to hand us our goodies – a T shirt and show bag of climbing goodies.

What separates the Festivus from other climbing festivals is that there is actual climbing. The 50 or so people who turned up got up early, scattered to all corners of Buelah, scrubbed lichen and sent problems. In the afternoon and evening there were the events to bring everyone together.

Putting up new lines and problems was both fun and frustrating in a way. When looking for new areas it was difficult to find the problems for all the boulders in your way. Also there was tonnes of lichen. It came off easily (especially with wire brushes, to which the Sydney-siders looked slightly queasy about using initially) but there was lots of it. Many new problems were sent, classics were re-done or introduced to new climbers. Not much route climbing was undertaken.

Being a farm there was no pesky problems with ethics. Todd often rode his quad bike right to the bottom of the boulders through all the trees. Rocks and trees were unceremoniously removed. There was no bolting problems – but only because I am sure no one bolted anything.

The first main event (held Saturday arvo) was the route that Todd had bolted on a massive granite dome. Whoever sent it first got the glory of naming it. Names were placed into a hat and each person could have their go. After much nail biting, Richard managed to pip the slabby climb (grade 23-24). The second event held that evening was the dyno competition. There were some spectacular throws that were just shy of the Australian record. After that people retired to the fire (someone was trying to cook a raw chicken leg on a stick over the fire. I wondered idly if they got salmonella poisoning for their trouble)

The next evening a fellow (sorry forgot the names) who had escaped the circus (obviously) had set up a massive tripod (about 8m high) on the top of one the granite domes near to camp. Suspended was a rope and ‘tissue’. People were having a swing on it earlier during the day, but in the evening the event was who could climb the rope the quickest. This was impressive as after three days of bouldering some of the guys were arm-over-arming it very quickly.

The next day my partner and I packed up and went home. The skin was shot through, the toes were screaming (from all the slabs), muscles screaming from epic walks and my hair was more lichen than cuticle.

What I like best was the deconstructed nature of the festival. You woke up, climbed, came back for an event and then chilled with everyone around the fire. Cliff and his family joined in at the evenings and was happy for us to roam everywhere around his property (although he said he liked the lichen on the rocks, and was amused at our efforts to clean the rocks)

Big thanks to Todd for organising
PS saw no sign of a wombat