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Country Road and bottles of wine

climbau

7-Jan-2005
7:48:04 PM

The bottle of wine tied to the belay bolts of Country Road at Buffalo (the oval area) is said to be a mystery in the guide. Does anyone out there know the tale of why the FA's left it there?

IdratherbeclimbingM9

24-Jan-2005
1:16:29 PM

Country Road at Buffalo (Australias 1st Grade 24), indeed has a wine bottle tied to one of the bolts of its belay.

Done in Jan 1976 it is unlikely that the wine bottle (as someone once said), is that same one pictured in "hard road to the top" news article of Baxter/Dewhirst guzzling a celebratory drink for the Oct. '69 ascent of Ozy!

More clues although the lable is 3/4 illegible;
*The brown tinted bottle is empty; (Damn my belayer!).
*The original cork wrapping on its neck is maroon in colour.
*The top of the white/pale yellow? lable clearly has the word 'Castle' as part of its brand/type as the last word in its headline sentence.
*Low on the lable is clearly the word 'Hobart' (probably as the origin of the winery in question).

Other points of interest:~
*The bottom belay setup options are now a bit 'iffy' since the recent fires, as the trees are dead, the cracks few and the loose after fire wash-out underfoot is abundant.
*The belay at the end of pitch one consists of a 1/4" button-rawl with fixed hanger and a 3/8" carrot (nil hanger though one still fits over the wine bottle thread); with a decayed 'bong' piton as backup in the nearby crack. The crack easily takes small cams as further backup.
*The offwidth top pitch has a fair amount of moss growing higher up in it, in places, (though would clean up with traffic).
*The shrubby-tree obstructing the topout is largely dead and now has a 'tunnel' through the middle of it!
*The rock architecture in that location is very pretty / quite amazing; the exposure is excellent (great); the climbing varied and problematically interesting; ~ All up I'd rate it M3 on clean aid (with large cams essential for the final 10m), and well worthy of its single star rating in the present guide.

climbau

24-Jan-2005
8:56:06 PM

More clues for the wine bottle:
* Under the word Hobart the following numbers are clear (? represents unclear number) ?45511
* The latters BANE are clearly printed at least a double space before HOBART.
* The company name is mostly lost but, N PTY LTD appear above HOBART.
*AUSTRALIA does appear at the base of the label below HOBART.

So, if there are any wine buffs (or wine guzzling climbers from the 70's) out there that may be able to help piece together the puzzle??????

P.S. Country road is a must do in my opinion whether you aid it or trad it, it has an awesome atmosphere and architecture.
By-the-way, the fixed hanger on the belay under the roof is a bit spooky as it flexes when weighted and wriggled on and is the soundest looking bit of hardware there.

climbau

24-Jan-2005
9:04:32 PM

Alright, lets piece together what we have so far:
1)The wine was a red
2) according to what can be read on the label it was produced by ........CASTLE which had offices in BrisBANE? and HOBART.
3) the numbers ?45511 could be part of a phone number or a postcode?
4) it was produced by an AUSTRALIA PTY LTD company
5)Was available in 1976 or thereabouts for purchase (unless Nic Taylor or Peter Watson raided their [or somebody else's] cellar).

Hmmmmmm, questions that need answers!

IdratherbeclimbingM9

29-Mar-2016
2:30:20 PM

On 7/01/2005 climbau wrote:
>The bottle of wine tied to the belay bolts of Country Road at Buffalo (the
>oval area) is said to be a mystery in the guide. Does anyone out there
>know the tale of why the FA's left it there?

11 years later I finally found the answer...

Page 47 of Law Unto Himself (by Michael Law), as part of a photo caption quoting Greg Child...

I left the wine bottle on the belay; no logical reason, other than we did silly stuff then as now.

The photo shows Greg Child falling off the crux of Country Road, with mikl holding it with a casual body belay, along with Nic Taylor also attached to the belay watching events.

Further quote; but this time mikl;

At Mt Buffalo Gorge Nic Taylor found an amazingly clean and smooth roof crack (most Buffalo granite is rounded, crystally, sharp, crumbly and gross), on the south side of the gorge.

Greg, Nic and I rapped into a hanging belay below the crack and worked the hell out of the thing. I solved the roof crux using a hand-fist stack (this technique was named Leavittation ten years later by Randy Leavitt) and pulled around the lip. I'd like to say I stepped off as it was Nic's route, but I was about to fall anyway. On the next shot Nick pulled the lip and then fell; he slipped out of his (slightly loose) Whillans harness and swung upside down with the harness caught behind his knees. He shot up it soon after and Country Road became Australia's first grade 24.

The photo was supplied to mikl from Greg Child collection.
PeterW, since you belayed Nic on the first ascent, was it you who took the photographs supplied?

Another question too if I may; It reads like the second pitch was put up before the first...
Is this the case, or had you done the first earlier?

On a side note: back when Leavittation was first described in a climbing magazine in an article about technique, the full technique (if I recall correctly), also involves obtaining knee jamBs and weird foot-locks to enable re-positioning of hand-fist, or fist-fist stacks.

mikllaw

29-Mar-2016
2:50:16 PM

On 29/03/2016 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:

>On a side note: back when Leavittation was first described in a climbing
>magazine in an article about technique, the full technique (if I recall
>correctly), also involves obtaining knee jamBs and weird foot-locks to
>enable re-positioning of hand-fist, or fist-fist stacks.

Yes, hand fist stack with arms crossed, then get a high knee jamb
Then remove fist, leaving the hand in an arm-bar position. Place free hand higher in arm bar, then move lower hand up into a fist jamb against the flat hand

PeterW

30-Mar-2016
12:18:07 AM

On 29/03/2016 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>PeterW, since you belayed Nic on the first ascent, was it you who took the photographs supplied?

Almost certainly not, although it was more than a few years ago now so I may not remember every detail! :-)
(If you're asking about the photos of the earlier attempt, it definitely wasn't me as I wasn't there.)

On our ascent there were other people taking photos from the opposite side of the gorge and/or the top, but not from on or under the route.

>Another question too if I may; It reads like the second pitch was put up before the first...
>Is this the case, or had you done the first earlier?

When Nic sand bagged me into belaying him, the story I got was that it had been tried previously but they couldn't do the roof. I don't think I realised how close they'd got. I led the first pitch, but I'm pretty sure I knew it had been done before. (Or perhaps I just assumed that was the only way to have gotten to the roof!)

I was reasonably good with cracks, but pretty bad with offwidths at the best of times, let alone through a roof. I had my trusty Jumars along so that when I eventually fell out of the roof, Nic tied off the rope and I jugged up to clean the rest of the route. I do remember it being one of the harder Jumar pitches I'd done because the rope was lying a metre or more deep inside the crack!

IdratherbeclimbingM9

30-Mar-2016
12:44:07 PM

Thanks for the feedback PeterW.

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