Climbing in the Grose Valley- with video

The recent heavy rain in southeastern Australia finally broke, giving us a beautiful weekend of clear skies and moderate temperatures. We decided to try a long adventure climb in the Blues called Bunny Bucket Buttress. This is a 9-pitch route with 270 meters of climbing, mostly at the grade 18 level (about 5.10a). Carrie and I are reasonably competent climbing a single pitch of 18, but stringing 9 of them together in a remote location accessed only by abseil made for a formidable challenge, as retreating from the route wasn't a viable option. We finished in 8-hours car-to-car, thirsty and pleasantly sore.

Here's a video of our climb, shot by GoPro, my new favorite toy and a Christmas gift from my parents. Enjoy!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abIVrt4PGak&feature=youtu.be

Grand Canyon Hike

It's been a wet summer in Sydney, and the last four weekends have been soggy and rainy. Apparently Australia's reputation for being hot and dry doesn't apply to the Southeastern coast. The rainy weather has been particularly painful for Carrie and me as it limits our rock climbing to indoor gyms, and I seem to have a limited ability to endure stanky gyms full of obnoxious and stir-crazy kids.

We decided to forget about climbing and embrace the rain, so we drove up into the Blue Mountains and to do a hike through the "Grand Canyon". This is a craggy slot canyon, where a combination of limited sun and a confluence of rivers makes for a rain forest environment that is much different than the surrounding dry forest.

This is a popular bushwalk, so we met a few other hikers despite the rain. Early on, we past a number of hikers that had turned around at the first stream crossing- apparently all of the recent rain had swollen the rivers. We didn't mind getting our feet wet and there wasn't much chance of a flash flood, so we kept going.

We walked through thick ferns, past caves that were used as shelter by Aborigines, and descended deeper and deeper into the canyon. We were soon surrounded by rocky cliffs on all sides, and the wet forest began to feel timeless and wild. We stumbled upon a plastic soda bottle that was full of old handwritten notes, some at least 20-years-old.

This little video will give you a feel for the canyon:

 http://youtu.be/S20cHNn7ows


After wading across the river many times, we hiked up and out of the canyon, wet, tired, and happy.

One of many stream "crossings"