Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Trip Reports

Tells Us About Your Latest Trip!

Topic Date User

Rutger Hauer revisited 17-Dec-2010 At 9:53:04 AM f_ladou

Message

Man, the rain, the rain.

François: (6:51am, Sydney): Good morning! What's it like in the Blueys?
Richie (6:52am, Blackheath): Sunny with abit of cloud :) shud be ok.

Armed with this precious information and despite the advice from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (showers, possible storms), Dominik and I decided to go and jump on Rudger Hauer once more. I say once more but in fact, this was a first for Dominik only -- I having done it one in March 2010 with Shaz and Alex .

I promised him that the third pitch (30m, 23) was alone worth the drive. Talking about the drive, we decided to take a different route this time, got lost, somehow visited Macquarie University (?!?), turned back in peek Sydney traffic after a major failure of Google Maps on my iPhone (i.e. my fcuk-up) and managed to take five hours to reach the top of the climb. Talk about route finding. Anyhow.

As we reached the top of the climb, Dominik mentioned that he was hearing someone hammering. In the distance, I spotted a tiny figure on the top pitch of Hotel California. Sure enough, it was Mike Law rebolting his mega-classic. Apparently, from the halfway ledge up, it's all beefy u-bolts and ring-bolts. Mike, I must say that I admire your dedication to the sport. I just can't believe they named Mark Zuckerberg TIME man of the year yesterday. Surely, this was a mistake.

At this point both Ritchie (the 6:52am SMS Ritchie) and Mike believed that the weather would hold. I must say that from the top of the valley, the weather indeed looked good. Big fluffy clouds jostling in a bright blue background. The day was starting well if a bit late.

The rap down was for once flawless and we were at the bottom of Rutger Hauer in no time. Dominik took care of the first pitch (30m, 19) in no time (9 minutes to be precise). The plan was to swap lead so that he'd be on again for the money pitch, pitch 3 (30m, 23). By the time I started on pitch 2 (30m, 21), the weather was turning rapidly. Thunder was rolling in and many lightning bolts where crisscrossing the sky on the South Side of the valley. I started to climb as quickly as possible but by the time I reach the crux at the top of the pitch, everything was soapingly wet. A minute later, the life saving hold would have been useless. I somehow managed to pull onto the belay ledge under heavy rain and agreed with Dominik that we'd take shelter on our respective ledges.

I crawled into a narrow cave and burried myself deeper and deeper as the storm grew. Very quickly, the rain turned to hail with gale force wind. Essentially, it was pelting down horizontally and for a while I thought we'd be in for a long, long day and perhaps a night in the Grose. Fortunately, the fury stopped rapidly - as rapidly as it came in actually. 30 meters below me though, Dominik had nowhere to hide and his only break was that he had our daypack and our rain jackets. Apparently, hail hurts. He sort of complained later about being covered with metal and exposed to lightning but I wasn't really listening...

I shot the following video literally a few minutes after the brunt of the storm where I couldn't see two meters out:

Amazingly, less than 60 minutes later, this is what the valley looked like.

Go figure. The weather Gods took pity on us, I presume.

Dominik started pitch 3 in less than dry conditions. Needless to say, he cheated where he needed to as some of the key holds were still wet. Shame because this is truly a stellar pitch. As an aside, I found that pitch extremely hard - much harder than the last time (March 2010). But this should be no reason for you not to try it: the protection is excellent and the challenge very real.

I took care of the fourth and last pitch (20m, 19). This a fun if strenuous overhanging pitch on big, big jugs. Really fun but the iron stone up near the top is really not that inspiring. The delicate lace is pretty though. Just pick the hold carefully. We ate our lunch in the sun sitting next to the "beautifully elliptical rock formation" near the top of Hotel California.

Mike was probably long gone by now.

Cheers, François