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Before I say _anything_, a BIG thank-you must go to Bindi, Andrew and Stuart for organizing and catering for the Bungles trip.  A much appreciated and quite monumental effort.  And what was all their hard effort for?  Well...
 

The are many things which could be said about the Bungles trip.  But for me two things stick in my mind the most.  We had joked about "The Warrumbungles Factor" ever since we bought the climbing guide book several weeks before
the trip.  It was Bastion Buttress, a grade 13 climb up Bluff Mountain, which turned the joke around.

We started the climb on a perfect spring morning.  The four of us walked for over an hour on a relentless uphill track, Andrew and Stuart bounding in front with Patty and me struggling behind, as usual.  The track gives way to bush bash and we finally made it to the base of a phenomenal 250m rock face.

When we got to what was guessed as the start of the climb we found some members of the Newcastle Rock Climbing Club already there.  (This was a recurring factor not mentioned in the guide book:-)  As there are no real defined climbing routes in this game we decided to start climbing too, about 100m to the right of the other climbers. Andrew started leading, Stuart belayed, while Patty and I waited for them to clear the first pitch.  I was thinking that it all looked a bit too easy when Andrew yelled down that he couldn't find any decent protection.

Thinking that such richly featured rock can't be that difficult I asked Andrew if he wanted me to lead up beside him.  He did and I soon found his troubles but managed to find a route through to a tiny sloping ledge with enough protection (including a piton) to end the first pitch. Before long three of us were at this semi-hanging belay and I was just starting off on the next pitch, but after the first move Stuart decided that he was too ill to do this climb and would retreat.  He abseiled off and I continued to look for the route up.  I couldn't believe it was only a grade 13 when I pulled up on a knee trembling ledge, placed protection and found myself in a dead end.  Too difficult to down-climb, I was lowered off to where I could see an alternate route.  And what do you know... another heart warming piton.  Time to make a belay and bring Patty and Andrew up.

It was here that I got my first surprise and wondered if I had made the right decision to climb that day.  I was taking in the rope, preparing to belay, when the rope suddenly felt light and I had the whole rope in my lap with nobody tied into the other end!  It seems that in the maneuvers for Stuart's retreat the rope had been untied just as I was taking the rope up.
(Golden rules -
a: always have the rope tied to something,
b: never untie the rope anyway.)

Andrew red-pointed that pitch and soon the three of us were at the second semi-hanging belay.  All was fine... except for that
gear which was left in my previous dead end.  There was no way I was leaving cams behind so off I went to retrieve gear.
Time to start the third pitch - not quite.  Patty quickly realized that this was more than a warm-up 13 and was angling for a retreat.  Off course us boys couldn't see the full size of the task and managed to convince Patty to continue on.

The third pitch had me dumbfounded. Up looked pretty much impenetrable, I had come from the right, so a traverse left was the logical conclusion.  It was at the end of this pitch that we finally got to sit down.  The fourth pitch was pretty cool and Andrew lead the fifth.

My first move on the sixth pitch led me immediately into another dead end. It was very hard to look calm while down-climbing back to the stance. Apart from that, no problems. Looking up at the seventh pitch, it all seemed quite nice.  I didn't want to
believe the other two that we had more climbing than daylight left. Everything seemed good to me so I encouraged Andrew to lead this pitch too. Andrew parked us on a large sloping ledge just below a totally featureless wall.  This is where Patty and Andrew started hallucinating  They were both pointing at a blank section of rock trying to convince me that there was a
bolt there.

Any way - it was my turn to lead again and I saw nothing but a blank wall above us.  As we came in from the left I decided to go to the right.  Bad call!  The rock was distinctly different - hard and noticeably black. After about ten meters, there was no protection anywhere.  My first thought was to down-climb and restart the pitch in the other direction, but a quick glance at the sky told me that there was less than an hour of light left and much climbing still to do.  The only way forward seemed to be a very small ledge to traverse left.  There was one spot to place protection at the start of the traverse - a cam at foot level.  I could see a tree at the other side which could take a sling.  There was no opportunity for protection along the way and no good handholds for balance.  The traverse was concave with a guaranteed bone crunching pendulum if there was a fall. I placed the
starting cam and meditated on the meaning of life.

It's now or never.  I pulled up several meters of rope to stop the rope drag then started.  If I felt myself fall I was going to leap with all my might for that tree on the other side.  Amazingly I made it.  Even though it was a short pitch I decided to end it there as the rope drag was phenomenal and I wanted to keep an eye on the others as they also faced the traverse from hell.  Patty was astounding.  She took one look at it, swore, pulled the rope up behind her to stop rope drag, and raced across it so fast I could barely belay quickly enough.  When Andrew got there it was dark.  He freaked - and who wouldn't - particularly when he couldn't find the headlamp we were sure was packed.  No Stuart hadn't taken it - it was just hard to find in the dark while precariously balanced 150m up a rock face.  He made it across but that cam was left behind.  Oh well - we'll chip in to replace it.

It was here that I noticed the search party below.  I flashed my headlamp to them - they flashed back - and I yelled out that we were ok.  The next pitch, despite being in the dark, was quite enjoyable. The full moon was up now, and the last pitch was easy enough that I soloed it by moonlight while Patty brought Andrew up.

Finally we made it to the top.  All that remained was to find the path down, wonder how we made a seven pitch climb into ten, and to contemplate the true meaning of "The Warrumbungles Factor".
 
 

For a scanned image of Bluff Mountain see:
  http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~bdrake/Images/BluffMt.gif  (330kB)
or
  http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~bdrake/Images/BluffMtRoute.gif  (95kB)

I will keep these images here if you want to link to them from your own
pages.

-- Barry
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Barry Drake,                   phone:+61 2 9385 3980
AI Department         mailto:bdrake@cse.unsw.edu.au
C       http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~bdrake
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